[looki]

Regarding the trains,

>They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe.

He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying.

I also thought the ICE and non-ICE dichotomy was funny. I would split them into long-distance (IC, ICE, EC) and regional (RE, RB, S-Bahn).

[1]: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... (Db-Fernverkehr tab)

[fhars]

Speaking about the punctuality of German trains, there will be a talk at 36C3 from someone who collected all the actual departure and arrival times of all long distance trains in Germany for this year: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/events...

The talk will be streamed. It is in German, but there will be a simultaneous translation into English and probably some other language.

[ajdlinux]

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time

The author is an Australian, and is therefore almost certainly most impressed by the fact that long-distance trains exist in any meaningful way at all.

Our long distance trains certainly don't have a reputation for punctuality.

[joshschreuder]

Our short distance ones definitely don't either (in Melbourne, at least)

[RileyJames]

We have low standards.

The Victorian “high speed rail project” cost $750M to increase our regional (long distance enough) trains to a whopping 165 km/h.

Here’s the kicker, when it gets hot, they have to slow down. And when I say hot, I mean, 36C (96F). And by slow down I mean 90km/h.

Welcome to Australia, that’s half a month per year. And it’s getting hotter. [bom](http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=086071&p...)

They can be delayed by such long periods they’re replaced by buses. When you arrive is anyone’s guess.

[bitL]

You have the same problem as Russia. Only a tiny part of the country/continent is populated, the population is spread along coasts, and even that not continuously. Building advanced trains is not economical, they won't service sufficient population per km traveled.

[jammygit]

The bad trains in Russia are strategic: it’s so that European conquerors can’t use the rails when the Russians get pushed back, but the Russians are used to it so they manage to function just fine

(wwii logistics joke...)

[djrobstep]

People often say this, but I'm skeptical the raw distances are the problem at all. I think it's simply a lack of vision.

Melbourne-Sydney is not much longer than Barcelona-Madrid, Which is served by a very successful high speed train route.

[overkalix]

Very successful? AVE routes, including the BCN-MAD one, are not financially sustainable. Spanish and European taxpayer money devoted to the comfort of businessmen and bureaucrats and the profits of contractors while metropolitan lines fall apart and receive little to no investment.

[djrobstep]

Most infrastructure like this is not "financially sustainable" in a narrow sense because most of the positive externalities aren't capturable. It's nonetheless a good idea (although we certainly need to figure out how to do these things cheaper and less corruptly).

The environmental benefits alone must be considerable as the route has replaced more than half of the air traffic iirc.

[cylinder]

Spain has govt debt of 100% of GDP too.

Flying between Melbourne and Sydney is incredibly easy and will only get easier when the western Sydney airport opens. There's nothing and nobody between the two cities worth putting stops at.

[the_why_of_y]

How is a government debt that was mainly caused by a residential housing bubble being popped in 2007/2008 relevant here?

Edit: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GGGDTAESA188N

[rorykoehler]

Airlines will try block it at every step

[tomarr]

Designing high speed rail for large thermal ranges is non-trivial as the forces can be very large.

Solutions can be very expensive (e.g. slab track), and therefore it may not be appropriate to build this out for 2 weeks of the year.

[chrisco255]

You linked climate data that included 1981-2010. When you actually search all of the historic data in the drop down, you'll find that there's no significant trend in # of days >35C since 1861. 1981-2010 did show 10.8 for that figure, but the periods 1871-1900, 1881-1910, 1891-1920, and 1901-1930 all showed around the same figure, at 10.8, 11.2, 11.1, and 10.2 respectively.

It looks more like a cyclical trend in Melbourne heat.

[RileyJames]

“It’s getting hotter” was based on “all data” vs 81-2010. Which shows an increase. (>30, 30 -> 32.1 & >35, 10 -> 10.8)

Additionally based on an abc podcast, the signal, which stated that since 1987 summer temperatures have been above average.

[the signal](https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/the-signal/changing-su...)

Let’s not get into a climate change debate. It’s not going to get significantly colder to the point where these trains are going to run on time more often.

[chrisco255]

I just quoted four other 30 year periods in the late 1800s and early 1900s that were just as hot or hotter than 81-10. You are just comparing an above average period with an average over 150 years. Ok, that says nothing, if the data set is cyclical and you cherry pick a trough or a peak to make a point, you're being dishonest.

I wouldn't bet that.

[ceejayoz]

Here in the US, Amtrak considers within 30 minutes to be "on time"... and struggles a lot even with that.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-amtrak-cant-run-trains-on-t...

> The Coast Starlight, which runs between Seattle and Los Angeles, had an on-time performance of 4 percent in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. For the California Zephyr, connecting Chicago and San Francisco, the figure was 7 percent. In the current fiscal year, the California Zephyr has not once arrived on time.

[glofish]

ok but the California Zephyr covers 4000 km - that's like going from Madrid to Moscow - I doubt any train or set of trains over that distance ever arrives on time.

[ceejayoz]

Amtrak doesn't fare much better when you evaluate it on smaller sections of the routes. Not owning the rails tends to put them at the mercy of freight trains. I've seen some of the longer routes on https://asm.transitdocs.com/map have 1-2 day delays marked at times. I arrived eight hours late the last time I went from Rochester to NYC (~500 km).

Look at https://asm.transitdocs.com/train/2019/12/13/19 and you'll see it's been losing substantial time at almost every stop along the way.

Ride some Swiss or German trains and then try out Amtrak and the difference will be difficult to deny.

[vinay427]

I live in Switzerland and in my anecdotal experience with only a few samples of each (which is not statistically valid but affects my immediate perception nonetheless), Amtrak has been somewhere around as punctual as Deutsche Bahn including on Amtrak's longer routes. The long-distance Amtrak routes also have far more comfortable rolling stock, but that's only natural for a 10+ hour route.

I once took a Czech train which was perfectly on time to connect with a German train which was delayed enough that I'd miss my next German train, except that delay ended up not mattering because the second German train was also delayed, but then the second train was completely canceled so I ended up waiting in a random city to be rerouted on completely different trains.

I'm sure DB is better than Amtrak in general, but the current state of DB is much more pathetic to me given its better performance in the past (AFAIK, tried to find data on this). The infrastructure and political will seem to exist to do better, which isn't generally the case with Amtrak, so it seems less excusable to me.

[glofish]

Sure, I got no love for Amtrak. Just pointing out that we should criticize it for short trips not 4000km ones.

[rayiner]

Amtrak’s on time performance on the northeast corridor, which it owns, is miserable too.

[wongarsu]

For context: the longest German rail line is ICE 27 traveling 1432km in 13 hours (as far as I can tell it's as punctual or unpunctual as any ICE).

The transsibirian railway covering 9288km seems to be famously punctual. On a multi-day journey it's probably easy to add enough slack to achieve that.

[cosmodisk]

Well...The local operators,here in London,solved the stats issue this way: if a train is late, it skips many stations and still arrive to the end station on time. Guess what,all the stats are produced on first- last ststion basis...

[ben_w]

Same idea but slightly different trick was being used when I was at university. Aberystwyth-Birmingham New Street was regularly terminated at Wolverhampton, so that it has gone far enough to count as “not cancelled” and because it didn’t get to BNS late it also “wasn’t late”.

[johnchristopher]

Eh. Same thing in Belgium. Only time of arrival in the last station is taken into account to classify a journey as being late or on time.

[burntoutfire]

What happens to people who want to onboard on the skipped stations?

[nmnim]

I'm not in London but up north, and it's the same here. In my experience you have to wait until the next connecting train, or buy a new ticket and catch a suburban train from a different company that takes 3x as long. This one is sometimes late and will skip your station. I've missed work (seminar teaching, short and time-sensitive, so not just a case of arriving late and staying late) because of cancellations and trains going through my station rather so they can be on time to Leeds or wherever.

[netsharc]

And he praises the food in the ICE trains... It shows he's Australian and earned a lot at BMW, the food on ICE trains are severely overpriced.

[rurban]

Could be that he used a czech ICE train operating the Prague-Berlin line over Dresden. This is mostly on time and serves good czech food. I wouldn't recommend eating on German trains as foreigner. Germans have similar food standards as British, the lowest end of the food chain. EDIT: Bavaria is different though. They actually have a different food tradition, more towards the more civilised countries Austria, Czech, Italy.

[dejv]

Well Prague - Berlin is not ICE train but EC train, but yeah the food in there is good and cheap. The best food was always on Berlin - Budapest route with Hungarian restaurant car. Great goulash in there, but this train now terminate in Prague.

[phreeza]

That is a EC, not an ICE, I think. Often full with drunk tourists sadly.

[fit2rule]

As an Australian who also moved to Germany and Austria, I can say that the trains are very impressive in this part of the world - until you go to Berlin.

Berlin trains will drive you absolutely mad. I was fine with German trains - impressed, even - until I tried to get around Berlin for a few weeks by way of the local train systems. The only thing I can compare it to, is British trains, which are absolutely terrible .. Berlin is like that.

[distances]

> Berlin trains will drive you absolutely mad.

Can you expand a bit, punctuality or what? In Berlin trains are sometimes a bit clunky, sometimes a bit late, but I absolutely love the Berlin public transport system.

[fit2rule]

It might've just been my luck, its not unusual, but there are a few things I've noticed about the time I lived in Germany which might be colouring things.

Every single town will have some road-work happening, somewhere. If there isn't any road-work in your purview, you probably don't know the German town very well, and just haven't seen the current street work yet.

This seems to have been the case with Berlins' rail system while I was there, during a particular summer.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love public transportation, and Europe, Germany in particular, loves it too. Its wonderful, and Berlin by common rail is a delight.

So I often got on the per-the-map "right" train, only to find there was construction work and we had to take the bus around the stations and then .. another train .. to get to destination X. Well, I'm a competent Euro- rail fanatic, should be easy.

Just: nope. Every week I got tripped up by not grok'ing where I was supposed to be to find the bus.

I confess, it might've just been me being dizzied by the delights of the city otherwise, but I did get to walk and catch quite a few Korkmännchen.

Every other German city I've visited (and there are quite a few worth the trip yet), has had absolutely decent, reliable rail. Best is Wuppertal with the Schwebebahn.. but boy, did I ever get lost in Berlin.

[mkohlmyr]

Was this ~2.5 years ago or so? I remember having a few instances of that in the kreuzberg area maybe but I don't remember it affecting basically the rest of the city at all. Like the other person in the thread I really loved the public transportation when I lived there, but yeah you have to build in your own buffers a little bit - I don't mind that so much.

[fit2rule]

Last year, so maybe just a continuation of the maintenance work that has been in progress in Berlin for a few years now .. yeah, generally speaking European public transportation is awesome (especially compared to Australia/California) .. I didn't mind getting lost a few times. Berlin is a nice city for that!

[Accacin]

Yeah British trains can be terrible, depends on the area. Saying that I've never noticed they were much worse than any other country I've been too, except maybe Japan.

[croisillon]

that reminds of an amusing time i went to buy a train ticket at dresden main railway station, back in 2003:

- i'd like a ticket for the next train to prag

- ok, 17:25 or 19:25?

- but it's 17:30 already?

- so what? the train is still on station

[lioeters]

That reminds me of an amusing time I spent overnight at the back of the Munich train station, in the cold Autumn wind, with German homeless people (several spoke English) drinking beer.

The reason? Had to transfer from one train to another in Munich - it was around 7pm, I believe - and had assumed from cultural stereotype that German trains would be precisely on time. First one was 10~15min late, missed my connection, and the next one to my destination was the following morning.

The person at the counter suggested sleeping in the waiting room, which was full of people on the chairs and on the floor. Lesson learned..

Edit: The lesson is, as another commenter stated below, increase the time between transfers from the default in Deutsche Bahn's online reservation system.

[bitL]

Heuristics for train delays: Does the train pass Frankfurt? Add 15-30 minutes. Otherwise expect your train within 5 minutes of its scheduled arrival/departure.

[nmnim]

I lived in Frankfurt for a year and now I live in England. I was so frustrated at DB and RMV when my trains were a bit late (3-5 mins for RMV, 15-20 for long DB) once in a while. Now I take a regular train from my town to a city and I've literally only caught it on time TWICE in two years. Usually 20-30 minutes late or suddenly cancelled. Trains here are a whole different level of bad.

[bitL]

Privatisation did "wonders" to British rail transport system...

[enqk]

Yes unfortunately we made that experience many times.

When you buy tickets from bahn.de, increase the default connection time, theirs is way too low and results in missed connections frequently.

[kaybe]

More rules:

- Get as few train changes as possible. (Being a few minutes late is no issue if there are no connections to miss.)

- Any changes should be in big hubs. (You might be offered a route with a change in a smaller station, but if you miss the connection the next train might be hours off. If you change in a hub there will be many others.)

- Don't take the last connection of the day for the last leg of the journey, you might miss the connection and be stranded. Even worse if it's a small station (offices will be closed if there are even any there, there will be services like hotel and taxi somewhere but have fun finding them).

[learnstats2]

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time.

By standards I am familiar with, that's good. Last time I checked, my local train station had trains arriving within 10 minutes only 50% of the time.

[mtmail]

"In Germany, there are two kinds of "on time". So far [2017], 94.2% of trains have reached their final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time, and 98.9% within 16 minutes."

The article also goes into detail how every country measures punctuality differently.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42024020

(Yes, Germans love to complain about the train company)

[lucb1e]

> 94.2% of trains have reached their final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time

That's a terrible statistic. First off, connections are designed to be just a few minutes, so 5 minutes delay (not included in this stat) makes you miss an average connection.

Secondly, that statistic is about trains, not people: one could manage to have 50% of people be delayed by 30-60 minutes every day and still have 94.2% of trains run on time just by having only the busiest trains between 8-9h and 16-18h delayed enough to miss people's local connection.

Finally, the final destination says nothing about intermediate stops (why not just look at every stop?). Things like switching drivers, refueling, or just introducing some slack in the schedule is most often done at endpoints. Heck, if I know this is the statistic being used, I would be sure to design my schedules to have even more leeway at the endpoints than I otherwise already would.

I'm curious to see how this statistic changes when it includes intermediate stops and counts delayed passengers rather than empty trains running on time. Optionally, counting the full delay (missed connection / actual frustration) instead of the technical train delay would also be interesting.

As one datapoint, my girlfriend takes a train from Cologne in rush hour that is 4-20 minutes late more than half the time, with a connecting bus that goes once an hour that is always on time or even early. She usually misses it.

[merb]

also this statistic is favored towards the north of the country. because there are way more trains. he lives in the south I guess (near munich) probably which has way less trains for regional traffic

[darzu]

I really wish articles like this put these numbers into a table or graph.

Does anyone know of a table comparing train punctuality?

[cosmodisk]

I see Germans taking best lessons from English counterparts... Reached last destination my ass...

[lucb1e]

75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane... I dunno, that's not really a chance you want to take, so you end up planning for 1-2 hours of delay every single time, depending on how bad it is if you're late due to no fault of your own (a departing plane won't care but a customer might understand).

[esrauch]

When I used to take Amtrak in the US routinely for a 6 hour ride I believe it was 0% punctual by a definition much much weaker than that. I don't believe it was literally ever delayed less than 30 minutes.

Also in the US airports you can't always rely on security being less than 30 minutes (barring TSA precheck), so the idea of missing a flight because the train was 10 minutes late is an absurd thought here.

I lived in Europe for the past couple years and as an American it really is shocking how drastic the understanding of public transit fundamentally is in the minds of the public at large.

[coldtea]

>75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane...

If you're gonna miss a plane because a train is more than 5 minutes late (I'm guessing closer to 10 or so, not 30), then you didn't plan your trip to the airport that well...

[lucb1e]

Right, so you have to build in slack yourself, i.e. you can't rely on the "high punctuality" of 75%. They might as well be 1% punctual and, unless the amount of delay also increases, it wouldn't change a thing.

[CodesInChaos]

10 mins delay is often enough to miss a connecting train, forcing you to wait for the next one, which is typically 1h later than the previous one. So planning for a 1-2h delay on a multi-leg train journey is prudent, if you need to be on time.

[cosmodisk]

While I agree with you on the planning part, it still doesn't chsnge the fact thst a train can't reach all the stations on time, despite having a predefined schedule,almost no traffic and etc.

[Rebelgecko]

I was in Switzerland recently and they put German trains to shame. I dont think we were ever more than a minute behind schedule. As soon as we crossed into Konstanz the scheduling went to shit

[john61]

In Austria this number is 86,6% (long distance, max 5 min late) Austrians also travel the most by train in the EU. (a coinicidence?)

[chillfox]

I don't know about trains, but where I live in Australia buses can be up to one hour late.

[fl0under]

Here in Adelaide (South Australia) I've found the buses have improved a lot over the last decade, usually right on time, only with the occasional delay (like 5-10 mins).

There are real time data available for our transport system which I find to be super useful so I can leave to get to a stop at the right time.

[0xdeadb00f]

Or they just don't show up at all.

[cylinder]

I live in Sydney and my train is literally never late, always to the minute. I'm just slightly out of peak (just after 9am).

[cyphar]

This might depend what line you're on. If you were on the massive T1 loop before they split it, a few late trains were almost a certainty during peak hours. If you live at Bondi it's unlikely your trains will be late because the line is so short.

Don't get me wrong, I do think we complain a little too much about public transport in Sydney (when in reality, it's actually fine most of the time). But it definitely does have some pretty serious flaws (too many single points of failure is the most obvious one -- especially the Strathfield-Paramatta stretch of track which is core to the running of 7 [out of 9] different lines without any way to route around it).

[coldtea]

>He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying.

Then don't arrange for "tight transfers"?

If "within 5 minutes" (or close, I'm guessing the rest of the time would be some "unbearable" late of 10 minutes or so?) messes your schedule you have a messed up schedule.

[ajdlinux]

I don't know about German train schedules specifically, but in life in general while avoiding tight transfers is generally a good idea sometimes you just have no say in the matter.

[wander_homer]

Their official route planer uses those "tight transfers" by default and calls them "Normal transfer duration".

[distances]

What happens in Germany if you lose your connection due to the train being late? In Finland the train company is responsible for ensuring you get to your destination (with taxi if needed) if the train rides were bought as a single trip.

[realityking]

Same here if the entire journey is booked on one ticket. I’ve taken a Taxi from Cologne to Aachen (~75km) on Deutsche Bahn’s dime.

Unfortunately Deutsche Bahn is not very up-front about these option (e.g. with vouchers) and you have to expense that taxi ride or hotel after the fact. A lot of people are scared of that as they’re not sure if they’ll get the money back.

[currysausage]

They will only refund you for the taxi if the scheduled arrival is after midnight and the expected delay at your destination is >60 minutes OR if it’s the last connection for the day and there is no other means of public transport that will allow you to reach the destination before midnight, and only up to EUR 80,00 [1] which wouldn’t even cover Cologne—Aachen (that is one intercity stop).

For regional tickets, some states or transport systems offer additional voluntary compensations. In NRW, you would be refunded up to EUR 25,00 before 8pm and up to EUR 50,00 after 8pm if your train or bus departs more than 20 minutes behind schedule. [2]

Obviously, there are edge cases like acts of God where voluntary compensations won’t apply (and legally binding compensations won’t apply either in a few years if a pending legislative initiative is successful). Since passenger information is less-than-ideal, it might be hard to tell if you will be compensated even if you know about the basic rules.

[1] https://www.bahn.com/en/view/booking-information/passenger-r...

[2] https://www.mobil.nrw/service/mobigarantie.html – I couldn’t find an official English version on my phone