[chrisldgk]

Depends on how you define „poor rail infrastructure“. Germany has a lot of routes and pretty much everything is well connected, but the state that the infrastructure is in with constant delays and badly maintained tracks is pretty bad.

[kazen44]

don't forget that compared to france, germany has a far more distributed population density, This makes rails far harder to maintain.

[Bellend]

Do you know why in 2023, this is the case? It has long irked me that rail is maybe 150 years old and yet somehow it costs outrageous money to maintain. I don't understand the "it is harder to maintain". Has there been no advancement?

[Turskarama]

A distributed population means it runs through more (a greater quantity of) populated areas.

This means more stations, more switches, and more road crossings. It also means when you need to do maintenance to the track you are more likely to be in a populated area which brings noise constraints, so possibly no working through the night. It means more road closures or interruptions, which may require traffic control.

Ironically it's going to be more expensive today than it was in the past when things like noise in the middle of the night was allowed and roads didn't have any car traffic to manage.