[kmlx]

> We need trains that are more or less on time.

i keep seeing these kinds of comments.

10 years ago i made the mistake of crossing the whole of germany by train. was a complete waste of my time.

since trains are basically a solved problem (see japan, china etc), i don't get why these issues still happen in developed nations.

[lispm]

China has 1.4 billion people and 150000km rail tracks.

Germany has 0.082 billion people and 40000km rail tracks.

Japan has a very different train system on an island. Germany is in the middle of Europe with a mesh of trains, long-distance and local - connected to all of Europe. One can take an excellent French high-speed train going from Germany to Paris/France. From my home-town there are freight trains directly going to / coming from Shanghai/China, more than 10000km away. There is a sleeper train going to Sweden, trains going to Switzerland. You can literally see people boarding a train here in Hamburg travelling 1000km to Switzerland, carrying their ski equipment.

> 10 years ago i made the mistake of crossing the whole of germany by train. was a complete waste of my time.

I was crossing Germany by train from south to north just this week. No problem at all.

[panick21_]

Lets be real, Germany long distance ICE trains have a big punctuality problem. Other German trains are mostly good, but the ICE system has lots of issues.

A lot of those are political, the planning and execution of their high speed network is totally messed up.

They had a reasonably good plan in the 80s but then the reunification happens and of course building lots of highways into East Germany was higher priority.

All these things can be fixed, but it has persisted for quite a while.