[_Microft]

Lufthansa rarely gets "Personenschaden" ("injury to persons", an euphemism for "suicide") on their flight paths while Deutsche Bahn has frequently to deal with that. A delayed intercity express train definitely delays departure of other trains that are considered Anschluss(züge) ("connecting trains"). It then ripples through the network.

[geff82]

Then how do other countries get to a reliable service? Japan, Switzerland, France…

[pjmlp]

Having travel a few times TGV trains across france, while connecting to Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, I wouldn't consider them much better than German ones.

I still have a good story from a TGV travel from Paris back to Geneva that took the double of the time, partial return travel back to Paris, again reversed mid-way back to Geneva, being blocked on a trainstation on the middle of nowhere waiting for restaurant wagon supplies trying to calm down everyone, and finally arriving into Geneva several hours later than expected.

I cut lots of details on that reliable train trip.

[lorenzfx]

Mostly by spending more money. Especially France and Japan built special rails only to be used by high speed trains. While those exist in Germany, there are less of them and they mostly don't reach from station to station but instead near the city centers high speed trains share rails with slower trains.