[iiiieu]

It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany.

But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-party-of-the-day (often those that were in government just a few years prior), and everybody talks as if no train is ever on time. And you can expect that car industry lobbies like that development too, without starting conspiracy theories here. (Tbh, if I was PR responsible for a car company, that's where I'd direct some funds..)

[probably_wrong]

Sorry, but no, the public perception is accurate. I do not own a car, meaning I've used trains to commute in four Bundesländer and after all my years I feel confident to say they have all been uniformly bad.

Two friends of mine have bought cars to go to work. A third is often crashing with me because they can't make it to their destination due to delays. And I changed cities in no small part due to a one-year train line closure that's six months behind schedule and counting. DB schedules ten minutes connections for trains that arrive nine minutes late and then argues "it's just nine minutes!" disregarding the actual fifty one minutes that it takes for the next train to arrive.

I love trains and I'll keep using them for as long as they remain the greenest option. But I hate DB with a passion and I dream of a day when those at the top end up in jail.

[tga]

> the vast majority of trains come on time

In 2022, only 65,2% of German trains were on time. In some regions, that ratio was under 50%.

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/puenktlichkeit-bah...

[iiiieu]

Which was acknowledged and dramatically increased since then.

https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen...

Within 5 minutes was at over 90% in july 2023 and within 15 minutes was around 98% in july, and it was even higher in the beginning of the year.

But you don't get that as front-page news.

[probably_wrong]

You are being misled by misleading data.

The "Total passenger traffic" (Personenverkeher) values (which are the ones you quote) are calculated in some opaque way designed to hide the fact that "Long distance traffic" (Fernverkeher) are really bad.

More importantly, every single indicator in that page is going down, not up, and they are all worse now than they were in January 2022 [1].

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20221209074309/https://www.deutsc...

[iiiieu]

Rejecting statistics that you don't like while pushing those that you do is a case of selection bias, the extension of which is the infamous "the election was rigged" trope.

It's easy to select a subset of trains to make the statistic of this subset look bad. Take a single train that was canceled. In that subset, the "on time" statistic is 0%. Really bad, eh? Or take one that was on time. 100%. Great, eh? Well, not useful, just like all other anecdotes.

So, yes, sure, we can all pick the subset for which the statistic suits our narrative and then keep disagreeing about the facts. It's not a useful way of debating though and only suits lobbys in pushing their agenda.

(Or we take the facts as they are.)

P.S.: Even the 80.6% that you quote are not "really bad". Ever been in North America? No train traffic at all sounds worse than 80.6% to me. The German train system has its issues, but it's by far not as bad as the public perception seems to believe.

P.P.S.: Check out the German "Staustatistik" some time. Over a thousand every day. Of course nobody who wants to make trains look bad and implicitly push the car as the better alternative talks about this.