I like the Norwegian model: The train company is obliged to put up alternative transport to your destination. If they don't provide an alternative within reasonable time, you can demand refunds for documented costs for alternative transport up to fairly reasonable limits. I've been bundled into taxis by the train operator in Norway because it was expected, but also likely cheaper for them to ensure full taxis than ha…
German trains were great twenty years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if things went haywire after lockdown. Many things did. It gave people a licence not to work and introduced a sloppiness into everything.
I'm fairly certain it was before that, as someone living in The Netherlands we'd always get warned to make sure there was at least 30-60 minute transit time between each stop in Germany when travelling international, as the expectation was that the train would be (extremely) late. This was already the case around 2015.
While it is true that that many problems where already visible 10 years ago, it is also true tat during the pandemic more trains were on time because having very few passengers speeds up the boarding/offboarding at stations enormously. So the pandemic somehow delayed the already inevitable fall into the abyss.
German trains were great twenty years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if things went haywire after lockdown. Many things did. It gave people a licence not to work and introduced a sloppiness into everything.
Trains are still great. Especially the newer generation ICEs are beautiful trains and very comfortable. Just don't count on them that they bring you to your destination in a timely manner.
Especially the model 2 is very comfortable but probably also the leader of the incident statistics.
> Most people here speak English Germany is the country where I found the highest number of people not being able to speak English, even people working in accomodation! French people probably know English but they refuse to speak it; Italians don't know English that well, but they try their best using rolling R's and gestures. (I'm a bit ironic)
English people can speak Italian though, just add a vowel-a on-a every-a word-a
Venkatesh Rao offers the following definition of the "Fourth World" Fourth world: Parts of the developed world that have collapsed past third-world conditions because industrial safety nets have simultaneously withered from neglect/underfunding, and are being overwhelmed by demand, but where pre-modern societal structures don’t exist as backstops anymore. This is what this story reminds me of.
Someone already assigned "Fourth World" to stateless nations, so it's probably fifth world by now. The developed world does have decaying infrastructure but moving it between the private and state sector has caused problems. As has lockdown and other international policies. Our local government's main interest seems to be in shutting streets off and designing bad cycle infrastructure that is little use to cyclists (I…
That seems pretty wildly orthogonal to me. Did the individuals and industries that truly drove fabulous innovation and development in the first world REALLY do it from a mindset of "it would be shameful to inconvenience others even slightly for one's own sake"? There are an awful lot of stories of rulebreaking out there... "The Wild Wild West" turned into some of the richest parts of the world, that name doesn't sugg…
It's not orthogonal. If you look at societies that industrialized early, their social development diverged hundreds of years before industrialization actually happened. When my dad was born in 1951, 90% of the population of Bangladesh lived in villages in extended kinship networks and multi-generational households. In such an environment, the informal rules of families dominate society. Bangladeshis have a very relax…
When it comes to formalized social systems vs. informal ones, I think deciding which is better comes down to what you're trying to optimize for. Some people prefer a more rigid, punctual and formal society, where you know precisely what to expect and what not to expect, and you can rightly get upset when the expectations aren't met. Others (myself included) prefer those societies where everyone knows everyone else and everybody's related if you go back 10 generations. In my experience, which to be fair was as somewhat of an insider to the group, these kinds of societies are less stressful. They feel better to live in.
I was in this sort of circumstance on a SEPTA train (using the same rails and stations as Amtrak fwiw) and they let us walk to the next station with no pretext. It was just the common sense thing to do and the SEPTA personnel running that train felt empowered to exercise common sense. The more bureaucratic an organization becomes, the more inhuman it becomes. An unwillingness to bend rules when the circumstance ratio…
I would expect a litigious country like the US makes common sense very expensive if somebody happens to get hurt. Train tracks are quite dangerous.
You would think so (and so would I), but my experience with Amtrak is that the conductors and engineers exercise a lot of individual discretion.
(I think it "helps" that Amtrak covers a very large area, most of which only sees a train once or twice a day at the most. So the practical reality is that there are a lot of stops where you pretty much exit the train right off onto the rails.)
Splitting trains is a quite common thing in Germany (though more long distance) and communicated in the official app. If third party apps don't show that information that's on their part. Usually it's also said after departure inside the train by the conductor, though maybe just on long distance trains.
Are we really living in a world where you need to have the official app - any app! - to ride a train?
Proper push notifications for train line delays are quite nice, and unfortunately half of us own phones that decided to shoot PWAs in the back of the head (there's still no vibrations for iOS PWA notifications?), so here we are.
I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…
Frenchman here and so true. I was taking the bus and it was stuck in traffic and I was like "hey can you let me out I life right in that street and shit aint moving" .... no fucking way. had to wait 10 minutes and then walk back to my place... driver was completly ghostinh me after he said the magic german words " I am not allowed to do this". In france they Busdrivers let me out between stops if I ask them before. G…
American bus drivers wouldn't do this either, at least not in the cities I lived in.
I often think about people in the USA, they might have some misdemeanor warrant for some traffic infraction they didn't know about on the other side of the country. They get stopped for speeding near their home in Florida, the police arrest them, take them to the county jail where they are stuck without bond waiting for extradition to the county where the warrant was issued. You might wait a few weeks in a cell, then…