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Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

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Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#151

Post by Gud »

robocat wrote: post #145
ahartmetz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one good thing is that they failed to take it private. Imagine how bad it would be with the current maintenance backlog and no public funding.

The New Zealand government sold their rail system, then Toll didn't make a success of it, so the government bought it back at a massive loss. Now rail is just a nightmare moneypit. But older voters love rail "it's efficient" so the government panders to them and wastes more expenditure on it. Edit: Currently for every $1.50 tax income from road user taxes and petroleum taxes: $1 is spent on roads, and 50 cents is spe…

I don’t know much about New Zealand but I do know that a functioning rail network is amazing(I live in Switzerland and frequently travel by public transport).

My native Sweden had an amazing rail network as well, we even made our own locomotives, but unfortunately it has also been neglected, though not as bad as in Germany.

Don’t diss rail, it can be great.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#152

Post by robtro »

hylaride wrote: post #135
lmm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure if this is better or worse than the UK's Network Rail story, but at the end of the day the only thing that will solve this is if they re-nationalize the tracks & infrastructure. What kind of an idiot thought including that in the privatization is a good idea is beyond me. It's not like you can build a 2nd railway network in order to get free market & competition. (For comparison, imagine privatizing the en…

Governments can be just as bad at infrastructure investments. That being said, I get the sense it's a German cultural problem. I used to travel to Germany quite frequently and was always surprised at the poor quality of much of the infrastructure, including private. The cell phone networks and internet speeds were all awful. As recently as 6 years ago my phone dropped to edge as soon as I left the city and within the…

It's not a purely cultural problem but mostly a political problem.

Germany sold out (a lot of it under the table and really fast without proper oversight) all of the good working stuff in the 90s to investors and the state kept all the bad stuff so there's no money or will to invest. All of your examples were state owned and operating nicely in the 80s. And then the CDU basically froze all progress for years under the umbrella of saving costs (instead of taxing the rich and companies and opening a lot of loopholes to transfer assets out of the country)

So all of the infrastructure in all aspects is on its last legs and somehow now you can't build stuff anymore anywhere apparently because everything takes forever in the western world especially in Germany where maddening Bureaucracy is apparently a good thing.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#155

Post by throw7 »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #64
wrs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This special mobile communication standard is designed to make communication fail-safe Mmm, nope.

If nothing works, eveything is safe, no?

It's not if nothing works, it's what works when nothing works, i.e. the safe thing must always work. period. (i'm not trying to be pedantic or an ass)

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#156

Post by robocat »

Gud wrote: post #151
robocat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New Zealand government sold their rail system, then Toll didn't make a success of it, so the government bought it back at a massive loss. Now rail is just a nightmare moneypit. But older voters love rail "it's efficient" so the government panders to them and wastes more expenditure on it. Edit: Currently for every $1.50 tax income from road user taxes and petroleum taxes: $1 is spent on roads, and 50 cents is spe…

I don’t know much about New Zealand but I do know that a functioning rail network is amazing(I live in Switzerland and frequently travel by public transport). My native Sweden had an amazing rail network as well, we even made our own locomotives, but unfortunately it has also been neglected, though not as bad as in Germany. Don’t diss rail, it can be great.

Rail can also be awful.

New Zealand is largely coastal so ships mostly beat rail. The 3 largest cities have their own ports. Cook Straight separates the South Island from the North Island, which complicates rail down South (apart from the Kaikoura Earthquake totally stuffing it). We don't do many bulk goods (unlike Australia which loves mining).

NZ overall has much less dense population - e.g. Auckland has insanely more urban sprawl than Zurich.

Sweeping statements about rail are a problem here (especially if incorrectly comparing against other populous or landlocked countries), and the biased love of rail makes for wasteful expenditure.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#157

Post by eqvinox »

robocat wrote: post #156
Gud wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know much about New Zealand but I do know that a functioning rail network is amazing(I live in Switzerland and frequently travel by public transport). My native Sweden had an amazing rail network as well, we even made our own locomotives, but unfortunately it has also been neglected, though not as bad as in Germany. Don’t diss rail, it can be great.

Rail can also be awful. New Zealand is largely coastal so ships mostly beat rail. The 3 largest cities have their own ports. Cook Straight separates the South Island from the North Island, which complicates rail down South (apart from the Kaikoura Earthquake totally stuffing it). We don't do many bulk goods (unlike Australia which loves mining). NZ overall has much less dense population - e.g. Auckland has insanely m…

> Auckland has insanely more urban sprawl than Zurich.

Auckland: ca. 1000 people/km² in 30km radius

Zürich: ca. 800 people/km² in 30km radius

People severely underestimate how sprawly Zürich is.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#158

Post by bertylicious »

martinald wrote: post #123
eqvinox wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, in case people are less familiar with German politics: DB is in a misbegotten state of privatization, started in the 90ies. The government spun it out into a private company but still owns 100% of it. They were trying to pump it up so they could sell it for good money. They did that by skimping on everything including maintenance, to try and make the numbers look good. Except they never got to whatever m…

Well, the EU insists that track & train operations are separate. (ironically the UK _is_ combining passenger operations and track somewhat back together, which is only possible because of brexit). The bigger issue tbh is the enormous cost inflation in civil engineering in general. This seems to be a problem everywhere. There's no doubt some of this is caused by material cost increases, labour shortages etc, but I'd s…

No. They cut on maintenance to make line go up. And then they deconstructed existing switches, signal boxes, train lines, and train stations to cut costs even more. This is not an EU problem or a regulations problem or labour cost problem. These are the fruits of privatisation and capitalism.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#159

Post by Ekaros »

throw7 wrote: post #155
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing works, eveything is safe, no?

It's not if nothing works, it's what works when nothing works, i.e. the safe thing must always work. period. (i'm not trying to be pedantic or an ass)

Safe in this kind of context means no property damage or no casualties or no injuries. Not no financial damage. Sometimes repairable property damage is accepted if that is active or passive safety component.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#160

Post by shmeeed »

mmoll wrote: post #4

If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.

Given the current heat wave, it might be a case of "trains not running because it's too hot"? As opposed to, you know, "trains not running because it's too cold", e.g. because of icing on the overhead lines.
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