[rmk2]

I'll reply to you regarding public transport, but this goes for all of the other replies, as well. The repeated failures every winter and overall frailty of the network seem to be a consequence of years of mismanagement and increasingly aggressive under-funding/cost-saving/corner-cutting by the Deutsche Bahn. While this certainly does not result in immidiate widespread collapse, it is just one sign of the degradation of the underlying infrastructure. So while "broken" might be somewhat harsh, I do think that this is directly the direction we are heading.

The water supplies do work fine, the problem however is, that, much like Dresden's sale of its city-owned flats to the Gagfah (an investor), selling core infrastructure to investors risks long-term sustainability in favour of short-term profit. You might be right though that this is somewhat down to ideology.

[raverbashing]

Berlin's public transport system is probably better than 90% of systems all around the world.

London and Paris are comparable (and worse)

Cost cutting by DB? So the problems are in the S-Bahn rather than the subway/BVG?

Edit: ok I read some answers, I'll add that DB is rebuilding the bridges on Yorkstraße