[mcv]

We did a carless vacation this year, and picked Switzerland, which is absolutely perfect for it. Trains are actually better to reach some places than cars are.

Unfortunately to get there, we had to travel through Germany, and their ICE network is a complete mess of confusion and delay. They do seem to be good at keeping the total delay just within an hour (it was 55 minutes both times), so they don't have to pay back any tickets.

[martin_a]

Nah, don't worry, they (Deutsche Bahn) hit the hour mark quite often without any problems.

Funny story on the side: German ICEs are only allowed up to Basel, so they will not cause any delays in the Swiss train network. The Swiss fear that we would destroy their fine-tuned system otherwise. :-D

[mcv]

Some ICEs only go to Basel, but there are definitely ICEs going all the way to Bern and Interlaken.

Which is a funny thing: Interlaken is officially a town of 5700 people, and yet they're got two train stations receiving international high-speed trains. I guess it's really a town of 5700 Swiss and 100,000 tourists.

And the ICEs that started in Interlaken left on time. But once our train to Switzerland got delayed, I think we had to switch in Basel and take a bunch of local trains. So maybe you're right; maybe they're only allowed as long as they're not delayed.

Still, I don't understand how German trains manage to become such utter chaos every single time. I feel a lot better about the Dutch railways now.

[martin_a]

I think they want to get rid of the trains going to Interlaken directly. At least that's what I read in the SZ [0].

If you haven't seen it, there's the great talk from David Kriesel on the 36C3 [1] about how Deutsche Bahn is... "doing statistics" to hide their delays. It's well worth the hour!

[0]: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/reise/deutsche-bahn-verspaetunge...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk

[mcv]

The most annoying part isn't even the delays. Not by a long shot. The annoying part is instead of relaxing in our reserved first class seats with a single layover, we're constantly puzzling what's going on, where we have to change now, lugging our luggage across 4 layovers, and losing our reserved seats, having to stand, etc.

I'd rather have an extra hour of delay than ruining a relaxing trip like that.

[martin_a]

Yes, I feel that. Did a rather long journey a few weeks ago (7+ hours). The ICE had a delay of 40 minutes in Hannover which they could reduce going down south. Once it rolls, it rolls and then it's mostly okay.

okay, WLAN was down, reserved seat displays were down, bistro was down, but the train was rolling!

[gottorf]

> "doing statistics" to hide their delays

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics." The older I get, the more true this becomes!

[saiya-jin]

I think the reason is more bureaucratic, costs, contracts etc - Swiss let happily French TGV on their trails, I took it few times with only Swiss ticket since I was getting off within Suisse (so no surcharge).

[martin_a]

I think the TGV is pretty much on time, that's why they have no problem with that.

[developer93]

It's funny because externally Germany somehow has the reputation of perfect punctuality, I can only assume that country stereotypes tend to be outdated.

[adrian_b]

When I have stayed for some time in Germany about twenty years ago, everything was still as expected from that reputation of perfect punctuality.

When I have stayed again for some time in Germany about ten years ago, in the same cities, everything was changed. A train that was not delayed was a miracle instead of being normal. Also everything was much dirtier, instead of being spotless, as before.

It was a quite shocking change after only ten years.

[mcv]

My impression of German Pünktlichkeit certainly took a big hit.

In the past, my trips to Germany rarely went further than Oberhausen or Essen, so that was never a big challenge to my belief in the German railway system. After this trip, my brother and dad (who have a lot more international train experience) were not surprised at all by our delays in Germany. Apparently confusion and delay are the normal state of things there.

[developer93]

As someone who's lived here 10 years you're spot on. I hear it all went to pot when they tried to reorganise DB to prepare it for privatisation, which never really happened, and centralised everything around Frankfurt. So now it's in a quasi independent state which no one seems very prioritised about fixing. Hey at least there's the cheap (Deutschland) ticket now.

[martin_a]

This kind of hits the core.

As the DB (Deutsche Bahn) is a private company now (although they are 100% owned by the state), they have to make a profit.

How do you make a profit? Either raise prices or lower costs. Doing both is the best and that's what they do. Raising prices is easy, it just gets more and more expensive, even the "cheap" Deutschlandticket is too expensive, experts say it should probably be around 29 Euro/month to make a real change.

How do you save costs? You do only the bare minimum of maintenance, don't invest in building more tracks and instead reduce tracks and track switches. That's what they've done the last 20 years or so. [0]

This leads to ICEs being stuck behind slower trains as there are simply no more tracks to switch to and pass cargo trains etc. So, if some train gets stuck somewhere or has a defect, every other train is stuck behind that for some time.

Now, as the state subsidizes some parts of Deutsche Bahn, building something new is also cheaper than maintaining what is there. So they let some things rot down so far that they have to rebuild it completely. As the subsidization is then higher, that's better for the turnaround numbers.

There have been thoughts about splitting off building and maintenance of the tracks completely of the rest but that didn't work so far. In that scenario the state would take care of the infrastructure and DB would just "rent" it to drive on it.

To add something else to it:

I think David Kriesel has it in his talk [1]: DB also "found out", that you can reduce delays in your overall network when you start skipping stops or canceling them completely. If you know that you're too late at your last two stops, just cancel those stops completely.

Cancelled stops are not part of the delay statistics of DB, so not driving somewhere at all is, statistically seen, better than arriving there late. Only a little bit problematic for the people that want to get there or board there.

Turning around early also has the "advantage" that your new train will be back on time again easier.

It's a mess for long distance travel.

[0]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Netz#Netzentwicklung [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk

[brabel]

I did a similar trip between Prague, Krumlov, Salzburg and Vienna, with a few other stops in between, by bus and train. We saw a lot of things by just walking around and using local transport lines, which include stops in the middle of nowhere. The area between southern Czech and Salzburg is just amazingly beautiful. Of course, Prague and Vienna are also amazing cities to visit, but that everyone already knows.

We only caught trains in Austria, and they were extremely punctual!

[johnwalkr]

Some people deliberately plan trips on ICE with a few connections. Then they are almost guaranteed to be delayed by more than an hour and get a partial refund.