There are many international routes where the same train continues from Germany into Switzerland, and then possibly into other countries. Germany has gotten so unreliable that Switzerland is stopping this practice on some routes, because late German trains have a knock-on effect throughout the system.
So now, the German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains.
Germany is also years behind on their commitment to getting cargo on trains. Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains.
It ought to be mortally embarrassing for the supposed industrial powerhouse of Europe. But that's OK, they are building more autobahn.
They should be embarrassed because Switzerland assumed the Italian part would be the one not finished on time and even helped a bit financially on that side to make sure it gets done. No one ever thought the Germans were incapable of getting it done. They are still buying land! Meanwhile Switzerland dug the longest train tunnel in the world. Italy is completely done as well and cargo imports are now shifting to the south instead of through the north.
Start looking at public infrastructure works in Germany and you’ll a series of massive cost overruns and hugely delayed delivery times. Airport in Berlin is a classic.
This is actually an intrinsic difficulty of the German rail network, due its highly interconnected structure, and the fact that it connects to other countries in all directions. The schedules are much more complex to handle than, say, in France where you mostly have a spokes-and-hub topology centered on Paris.
And yet every time there’s a delay in one of those connections, it’s DB that’s at fault, and somehow never the rail companies it interconnects with.
If what you say is true and Germany is uniquely more interconnected than other European countries (which I don’t buy, btw), then you still have cause and effect backwards: the interconnection makes the impact of delays worse, it doesn’t cause them. The delay ultimately happens in a single place and then has knock-on effects, but the place it starts is usually inside Germany.
> Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains.
And the same is happening with the Brennerbasistunnel in Austria again.
Italy and Austria are about to start constructing the last remaining sections, which are going to be finished in around 2034.
While Germany has not built anything, and is still discussing where they are going to build the tracks. They expect the construction to start 2030, not to be finished before 2040 Likely even later as that are wild guesses and the construction phases are not yet planned.
They are not building more autobahn!!! Autobahn is not green enough. The infrastructure is falling apart.
A tunnel in Munich takes from idea to building at least 40 years. 8 miles of regional train extension takes 3 decades (building start date not known yet). Funny thing is that most of the track is already available. That’s the new real Germany. Not the one we knew from the movies.
Doch, Alter. The German federal government and at least 3 top parties are completely captured by the auto industry, so we're tearing down neighborhoods to extend urban freeways in Berlin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_100
They're getting there, they're building a more direct route between Karlsruhe and Basel. At the moment though, these ICE and cargo trains are passing through some tiny villages with barely more than two tracks.
I really wish cargo trains could just pass underground via tunnelling tech. They are obscenely loud, and given the mountain-valley nature of the villages in the Rheinland, their sound travels very far in the night, and often echoes around.
> German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains.
It's not just German trains. The Swiss are rather strict about train punctuality (more than 2 min is not accepted if memory serves), and if an international train would cause delays, the Swiss put on their own train on regular schedule and halt the tardy train at the border.
Doesn't seem so, just checked Chur -> Zürich HB, for Sunday "SBB Mobile" offers a ICE starting from Chur at 12:35. Basel SBB -> Zürich also offers ICE connections.
AFAIK there are less ICE trains running in Switzerland due to the issues, but the remaing ones still seem to appear in the trip planner.
I used to complain about trains being late in my home country before moving to the USA. I had a 90minute commute each way which sounds terrible but it was actually wonderful. It was 3 hours of bliss each day. I would board the train near my home, sit down and enjoy a smooth, quiet ride (electric and quiet carriages) all the way into the stop next to my work (no changeover). I had internet for almost the whole way.
Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!".
Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. I long for the 90minute each way commute on a train that was silent and silky smooth. The 5minute delays here and there wasn't nearly as bad as i thought at the time. I just didn't have perspective.
This article has no precise details on the time trains are delayed. It just says they often run late and gives vague non-specific "The degree of lateness ranged from minutes to several hours" and it's really not based in fact. You can ask anyone anywhere in the world what they think of the delays on their train system and even for the world class train systems people will complain due to the lack of perspective while not realising just how lucky they are.
The middle tab ("DB Fernverkehr") shows the percentage of trains arriving less than 16 minutes late (black) and less than 6 minutes late (red). In September 2023, 23% of trains were more than 15 minutes late!
The SBB already considers a train late when it arrives more than 2 minutes after the scheduled time. Yet, they routinely achieve more than 90% punctuality rates.
A few years ago David Kriesel did some independent data mining on the reported delays. One point that came up is that official statistics do not even cover train stops that where cancelled and I think it was also mentioned that cancelling stops was one of the ways used to make up for lost time if needed to avoid knock-on effects.
Last year, 10% of trains were delayed by > 6 minutes; this year 12%.
Note, some common complaints about these statistics are:
1. They measure delay at arrival at the end station. However, many trains have some margins built in during their ride, so they may be delayed en-route but "catch up" by the time they reach their end destination; resulting in more favorable numbers.
2. Cancelled trains are not counted in the statistics. So ironically, to improve punctuality statistics, it is "better" to cancel a train than having it run with a delay.
3. Trains are more delayed during peak hours than off-peak or during the weekend, but all trains count equally in these numbers.
4. If a (e.g. 5 minute) delay causes you to miss your transfer, you arrive much later at your final destination (e.g. 30 or 60 minutes).
5. If you inflate travel times (adding some extra "margin"), you can avoid bad statistics but passengers still don't get at their destination faster. This has happened in the past.
A fairer way to calculate delays would be to take a sample of all passengers and measure how delayed they arrive at their (final) destination. An organization that advocates for public transport users (TreinTramBus) has done this in the past, I thought, but I can't find it back.
My perspective: grew up in Texas where I was not able to leave my little housing development (void of anything but houses) independently until I got a driver's license and car at 16, then went to university in Baltimore with its sketchy buses, subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs, and commuter trains that were mostly good for getting to the stadium downtown from various suburban Maryland parking lots.
Germany's rail system, despite irritating delays, is a wonder to this Texas gal, and changed my relationship with driving. Intercity rail is about as irritating as flying, delay wise. Getting good with the schedule app adds a lot of agency - I've made lots of spur of the moment connection change decisions (having the 50% off flexible fares card also helps).
The rail system has been a bit of a victim of the Deutschlandticket's success. When everyone who kind of takes the subway or train sometimes and can commit to 49 EUR/mo now has unlimited rides on everything but the high speed trains, they use it. And Germany had a really nice summer that extended well past the usual summer time, resulting in packed trains to anywhere vaguely scenic up to this weekend.
> subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs
Yep. This right here is why North America, with tiny exceptions, has terrible public transit; it is built under the assumption only the poorest will use it and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
> Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!".
> Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this.
The German way is rather to compare the punctuality of the German trains to Swiss or Japanese ones: these are a lot more punctual, so this problem is mostly solvable.
Thus German citizens legitimately ask why are the Swiss and Japanese able to solve this problem, and we can't? In particular in consideration that this is considered to be an engineering problem where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
Japan has dedicated lines for high-speed trains and a mostly north-south corridor.
Germany has mixed-use lines in a meshed network directly connected to neighbour countries.
> where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
I think you made that up. Germans complain a lot about their infrastructure and you can read&see a lot of reports&comparisons with other countries train infrastructure.
Having commuted 55 minutes each way into Munich for more than a year, I'd say my average daily delay is about 15 minutes with >30 minutes delay happening at least once a week.
That's a level of regular delay that makes early morning meetings impractical because I'll be late more likely than not.
On my connection from bumfuckville in south-east Germany to Berlin, all involved trains run on a 1 hour schedule, but they are not perfectly connected to each other (for instance in Leipzig I miss the ICE to Berlin by just ten minutes).
Sometimes when the previous train is delayed I'm lucky and catch that. Paradoxically saving me time despite a train being delayed ;)
All in all I can't complain, last 6 months were bad because of an unbelievable amount of construction work so some flexibility was required (eg going over different cities or taking an "express bus" between two cities, but now the connection is working normally again.
With at most one hour until the next train, I guess it's mostly ok if one plans ahead with some wiggle room. People are really getting riled about the tiniest things these days.
PS: the most likely delay on that connection is the ICE between Munich and Hamburg via Leipzig and Berlin, the regional trains are pretty much always on time (except when there are construction sites of course).
People who commute regularly remember the days when there was some problem--not all the days when things worked pretty much as expected.
I will say that I went in maybe 50% of the time into my city office at one point and it was about 90 minutes each way. It got old. Get up at 6am, drive to train station, take train, 10 minute walk to office. It's just a big chunk out of your day and the train could get very crowded. Almost never go into another office these days and that's about 2 hours each way.
The difference for me was that my home was a 2 minute walk to the train station and work 5minutes.
Without changeovers it was essentially 3 hours of "Do what you want to do online guilt free without distraction" sitting in a seat on the train. I'd hate to do any form of intermodal commute but zoning out on a single train? Easy! In fact kind of a nice forced escape.
Here is a quote from a different article with numbers (apparently self reported by Deutsche Bahn) for January 2023 for one station:
> Less construction work in cold weather normally means fewer delays. But only 71,8 percent of Deutsche Bahn trains that ran between January 1 and February 9 managed to pull into the station on time, or with a delay of no more than five minutes and 59 seconds.
Notice that trains which are about five minutes late are not reported as such. These included, the ratio of delayed trains might well be more than half. (Canceled trains are also sometimes not included as delayed, it is unclear if that is the case here.)
I mind random cancellations, platform changes (announced at the last second of course), mind-bogglingly unreliable (late, overcrowded, unable to carry bikes) replacement buses and incorrect (and sometimes conflicting - this has gotten worse!) information about all of it on the apps.
Never take the last long-distance route of the day.
> Earlier this month, after weeks of speculation over the future of Britain’s planned HS2 high-speed rail link from Birmingham to Manchester, the prime minister finally announced that the northern leg was to be scrapped.
Actually Germany has and is building&upgrading new train lines and is buying new trains. It's also building/upgrading new train stations in major cities.
There is an extensive public transport system with regional trains and also long distance trains. Core technical infrastructure in many places for them is old. Especially computer controlled train operations have to be introduced in many places.
Upgrading this takes a decade or more and this process is very expensive and will cause even more delays during the update phase. It will partly get worse, before it gets better.
For example the high-speed connection between Hamburg and Berlin (roughly every 30 minutes ICE trains travel in both directions) will be upgraded during the next two years and there will be longer travel times for several months.
Upgrading the major train stations is also very difficult, since most of them are in the center of already dense cities. Here in Hamburg one of the important ICE train stations (Altona, where several ICE trains are starting) will be moved to a new place in the city (a few km apart). The train station then will no longer be a terminus (trains now enter/leave only in one direction), which will improve travel times. Cost will be more than 0.5 billion Euros.
One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers...
I was in the Donau valley two years ago (a gorgeous place) and the local train station for a village of under thousand people had fully mechanical operation! As in: levers, pulleys, weights that had to be cranked up, springs and even those cool mechanical sign posts that work on gravity and steel rods.
It was beautiful engineering, I spent hours watching it all being operated by two men who lived on the station. I can only imagine how such old tech is holding everything back. But can also appreciate how it just keeps running: it just needs skilled humans, and lots of grease.
> One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers...
Does the German government have a history of offering competitive pay to train system workers, sufficiently high to make it a more attractive option than a Mon to Fri 8AM to 4PM desk job?
Try to find skilled workers now. There are many industries/professions in competition. It's also not the "german government", which employs train system workers.
Amusing article. Yes German trains are often late. One of the main reasons was suicides. Previously all trains in that area would be stopped until all body parts were found and collected. This practice is no more. Trains have to go slower in the clean up area but not stop.
Comparing Deutsche Bahn and the UK train service is like comparing night and day. With DB you get value for money and comfort. With UK trains you get something else entirely, must not forget to mention most of them don't pay tax and are run as offshore entities..
According to random search result[0], there are ~800 annual suicides by train per year in Germany. For the number of lines in the country, that does not seem like a sufficient number to explain away train delays.
If you have two of those each day, you'll get lots of network effects. Imagine a train track from Hamburg (where a lot of ICE trains are starting) to the south being delayed for two hours in the morning. That means a lot of effects since the train lines and train stations are often operating at the higher end of the capacity.
For example recently two girls im my hometown were doing Tiktok videos for a challenge on a high-speed train track. One got killed and one barely survived. The whole track between Hamburg and Berlin was closed for hours.
Whenever there are reports of people on the tracks, they need to be checked and trains are stopped.
I mean that is on average >2 lines per day, which doesn't sound like much, but how many people use a line per day? and I'm guessing suicides occur more often on busy lines, so it's significant still
UK trains are very expensive but it's a myth that the service is poor. when I was last in Germany, I took 3 trains. 2/3 were more than 15 minutes delayed and the third was 5 minutes late. obviously 3 is a small sample size, but I've taken tens of trains in a row in the UK without a delay of even 5 minutes. the trains also appeared to be a lot older and in worse condition than the average British train I've been on
Not true. Rail card makes German trains a total value for money proposition. Rolling stock is 10 times better. Comfortable, warm with many seating options. This is across the board. Want to experience time travel? Take a regional UK train and go back to 1950...
I emigrated to Germany 4 years ago when I still belived in the myth of German efficiency but at this point I am completely disillusioned.
It's a myth that is problematic because even Germans started to belive in and it's holding it back. German rail is in horrible state, internet speed is a joke, banking system is ancient and you still have problems with paying with cards. Also dealing with even simple stuff require a crazy amount of documentation and personal visit for no good reason.
And the worst part is that due the German mentality and their feel that their are the greatest nothing will be improved and any insight from abroad used. Their approach is always just "Well what can we or oh it's definitely the best system".
Germany is the best in marketing and eating the benefits of the previous generations.
The same situation in Sweden. My assumption is that German train operators maximize profit. So they calculate. Either run trains on time, have redundant train sets in nearby depots, have locomotive drivers on standby in case one gets sick (not an uncommon reason for delays). Or don't have any redundancy at all and hand out refunds and gift vouchers to the passengers affected by delays. Also make the claims system as Byzantine as possible to make it difficult for passengers to make claims. Think it's an easy choice for most operators.
You know that experience where as a company ages and grows, as a product evolves, it becomes harder and harder to do anything? Sure, if you do a great job planning and designing your runway is longer, but the music always slows.
This also seems to happen with cities. The bigger and more established, the harder it is, for obvious reasons, to retrofit mass transit and whatnot. Downtowns of large cities always feel kinda hacked together.
Does the same happen with a country? The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down?
Readit News
So now, the German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains.
Germany is also years behind on their commitment to getting cargo on trains. Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains.
It ought to be mortally embarrassing for the supposed industrial powerhouse of Europe. But that's OK, they are building more autobahn.
Dead Comment
If what you say is true and Germany is uniquely more interconnected than other European countries (which I don’t buy, btw), then you still have cause and effect backwards: the interconnection makes the impact of delays worse, it doesn’t cause them. The delay ultimately happens in a single place and then has knock-on effects, but the place it starts is usually inside Germany.
And the same is happening with the Brennerbasistunnel in Austria again. Italy and Austria are about to start constructing the last remaining sections, which are going to be finished in around 2034. While Germany has not built anything, and is still discussing where they are going to build the tracks. They expect the construction to start 2030, not to be finished before 2040 Likely even later as that are wild guesses and the construction phases are not yet planned.
Edit: more detailed dates
A tunnel in Munich takes from idea to building at least 40 years. 8 miles of regional train extension takes 3 decades (building start date not known yet). Funny thing is that most of the track is already available. That’s the new real Germany. Not the one we knew from the movies.
Doch, Alter. The German federal government and at least 3 top parties are completely captured by the auto industry, so we're tearing down neighborhoods to extend urban freeways in Berlin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_100
And the FDP scored the transport ministry in the traffic-light coalition, so of course there announced a plan to extend a bunch of highways: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/plans-fast-track-expans...
I really wish cargo trains could just pass underground via tunnelling tech. They are obscenely loud, and given the mountain-valley nature of the villages in the Rheinland, their sound travels very far in the night, and often echoes around.
It's not just German trains. The Swiss are rather strict about train punctuality (more than 2 min is not accepted if memory serves), and if an international train would cause delays, the Swiss put on their own train on regular schedule and halt the tardy train at the border.
[0]: https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society...
Dead Comment
Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!".
Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. I long for the 90minute each way commute on a train that was silent and silky smooth. The 5minute delays here and there wasn't nearly as bad as i thought at the time. I just didn't have perspective.
This article has no precise details on the time trains are delayed. It just says they often run late and gives vague non-specific "The degree of lateness ranged from minutes to several hours" and it's really not based in fact. You can ask anyone anywhere in the world what they think of the delays on their train system and even for the world class train systems people will complain due to the lack of perspective while not realising just how lucky they are.
The middle tab ("DB Fernverkehr") shows the percentage of trains arriving less than 16 minutes late (black) and less than 6 minutes late (red). In September 2023, 23% of trains were more than 15 minutes late!
Compare this to Switzerland's SBB: https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?highlighted=e68508fb204...
The SBB already considers a train late when it arrives more than 2 minutes after the scheduled time. Yet, they routinely achieve more than 90% punctuality rates.
A few years ago David Kriesel did some independent data mining on the reported delays. One point that came up is that official statistics do not even cover train stops that where cancelled and I think it was also mentioned that cancelling stops was one of the ways used to make up for lost time if needed to avoid knock-on effects.
German presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk
Last year, 10% of trains were delayed by > 6 minutes; this year 12%.
Note, some common complaints about these statistics are:
1. They measure delay at arrival at the end station. However, many trains have some margins built in during their ride, so they may be delayed en-route but "catch up" by the time they reach their end destination; resulting in more favorable numbers.
2. Cancelled trains are not counted in the statistics. So ironically, to improve punctuality statistics, it is "better" to cancel a train than having it run with a delay.
3. Trains are more delayed during peak hours than off-peak or during the weekend, but all trains count equally in these numbers.
4. If a (e.g. 5 minute) delay causes you to miss your transfer, you arrive much later at your final destination (e.g. 30 or 60 minutes).
5. If you inflate travel times (adding some extra "margin"), you can avoid bad statistics but passengers still don't get at their destination faster. This has happened in the past.
A fairer way to calculate delays would be to take a sample of all passengers and measure how delayed they arrive at their (final) destination. An organization that advocates for public transport users (TreinTramBus) has done this in the past, I thought, but I can't find it back.
Germany's rail system, despite irritating delays, is a wonder to this Texas gal, and changed my relationship with driving. Intercity rail is about as irritating as flying, delay wise. Getting good with the schedule app adds a lot of agency - I've made lots of spur of the moment connection change decisions (having the 50% off flexible fares card also helps).
The rail system has been a bit of a victim of the Deutschlandticket's success. When everyone who kind of takes the subway or train sometimes and can commit to 49 EUR/mo now has unlimited rides on everything but the high speed trains, they use it. And Germany had a really nice summer that extended well past the usual summer time, resulting in packed trains to anywhere vaguely scenic up to this weekend.
Yep. This right here is why North America, with tiny exceptions, has terrible public transit; it is built under the assumption only the poorest will use it and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
> Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this.
The German way is rather to compare the punctuality of the German trains to Swiss or Japanese ones: these are a lot more punctual, so this problem is mostly solvable.
Thus German citizens legitimately ask why are the Swiss and Japanese able to solve this problem, and we can't? In particular in consideration that this is considered to be an engineering problem where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
Germany has mixed-use lines in a meshed network directly connected to neighbour countries.
> where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
I think you made that up. Germans complain a lot about their infrastructure and you can read&see a lot of reports&comparisons with other countries train infrastructure.
That's a level of regular delay that makes early morning meetings impractical because I'll be late more likely than not.
All in all I can't complain, last 6 months were bad because of an unbelievable amount of construction work so some flexibility was required (eg going over different cities or taking an "express bus" between two cities, but now the connection is working normally again.
With at most one hour until the next train, I guess it's mostly ok if one plans ahead with some wiggle room. People are really getting riled about the tiniest things these days.
PS: the most likely delay on that connection is the ICE between Munich and Hamburg via Leipzig and Berlin, the regional trains are pretty much always on time (except when there are construction sites of course).
I will say that I went in maybe 50% of the time into my city office at one point and it was about 90 minutes each way. It got old. Get up at 6am, drive to train station, take train, 10 minute walk to office. It's just a big chunk out of your day and the train could get very crowded. Almost never go into another office these days and that's about 2 hours each way.
Without changeovers it was essentially 3 hours of "Do what you want to do online guilt free without distraction" sitting in a seat on the train. I'd hate to do any form of intermodal commute but zoning out on a single train? Easy! In fact kind of a nice forced escape.
> Less construction work in cold weather normally means fewer delays. But only 71,8 percent of Deutsche Bahn trains that ran between January 1 and February 9 managed to pull into the station on time, or with a delay of no more than five minutes and 59 seconds.
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-de...
Notice that trains which are about five minutes late are not reported as such. These included, the ratio of delayed trains might well be more than half. (Canceled trains are also sometimes not included as delayed, it is unclear if that is the case here.)
I mind random cancellations, platform changes (announced at the last second of course), mind-bogglingly unreliable (late, overcrowded, unable to carry bikes) replacement buses and incorrect (and sometimes conflicting - this has gotten worse!) information about all of it on the apps.
Never take the last long-distance route of the day.
The trains suck a little bit. But this is mainly caused by two reasons:
1. Years of under-investment
2. No separation between bullet trains and freight trains (compare to China!)
1 can be solved over time. Point 2 is trickier. In general there is some but not enough fantasy. I would suggest:
a) more investments
b) several bullet trains connecting Europe.
c) more sleeper trains
d) self coupling trains.
Yes, you can go from Frankfurt to Paris in the same train. But why not from Warsaw to Madrid? With self coupling cars this might be feasible.
OT: This is interesting for freight. https://www.cargobeamer.com/
Actually Germany has and is building&upgrading new train lines and is buying new trains. It's also building/upgrading new train stations in major cities.
There is an extensive public transport system with regional trains and also long distance trains. Core technical infrastructure in many places for them is old. Especially computer controlled train operations have to be introduced in many places.
Upgrading this takes a decade or more and this process is very expensive and will cause even more delays during the update phase. It will partly get worse, before it gets better.
For example the high-speed connection between Hamburg and Berlin (roughly every 30 minutes ICE trains travel in both directions) will be upgraded during the next two years and there will be longer travel times for several months.
Upgrading the major train stations is also very difficult, since most of them are in the center of already dense cities. Here in Hamburg one of the important ICE train stations (Altona, where several ICE trains are starting) will be moved to a new place in the city (a few km apart). The train station then will no longer be a terminus (trains now enter/leave only in one direction), which will improve travel times. Cost will be more than 0.5 billion Euros.
One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers...
It was beautiful engineering, I spent hours watching it all being operated by two men who lived on the station. I can only imagine how such old tech is holding everything back. But can also appreciate how it just keeps running: it just needs skilled humans, and lots of grease.
Does the German government have a history of offering competitive pay to train system workers, sufficiently high to make it a more attractive option than a Mon to Fri 8AM to 4PM desk job?
Dead Comment
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-...
For example recently two girls im my hometown were doing Tiktok videos for a challenge on a high-speed train track. One got killed and one barely survived. The whole track between Hamburg and Berlin was closed for hours.
Whenever there are reports of people on the tracks, they need to be checked and trains are stopped.
It's a myth that is problematic because even Germans started to belive in and it's holding it back. German rail is in horrible state, internet speed is a joke, banking system is ancient and you still have problems with paying with cards. Also dealing with even simple stuff require a crazy amount of documentation and personal visit for no good reason.
And the worst part is that due the German mentality and their feel that their are the greatest nothing will be improved and any insight from abroad used. Their approach is always just "Well what can we or oh it's definitely the best system".
Germany is the best in marketing and eating the benefits of the previous generations.
This also seems to happen with cities. The bigger and more established, the harder it is, for obvious reasons, to retrofit mass transit and whatnot. Downtowns of large cities always feel kinda hacked together.
Does the same happen with a country? The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down?
Doesn't really apply to Germany all that well.