I moved to Germany 10 years ago and while regional and suburban train service has been great, the long distance service has been terrible, with high prices, almost no high speed service and no competition. I'm Italian and therefore I had very low expectations, but at least high speed trains in Italy run better than Germany (at least until recently, when lack of regular maintenance work ultimately made its dent into the service quality).
But for many software engineer this is not a big surprise: everyone knows that accumulating tech debt and neglecting maintence will eventually bite back sooner or later.
> high speed trains in Italy run better than Germany
Not to excuse the German performance, but part of the reason is that the Italian high-speed railway network is significantly simpler than the German one, also in terms of interconnections with neighbouring countries:
Germany is much flatter than Italy - while the the line between Bologna and Florence, Florence and Rome, Rome and Naples, must go through a lot of mountains or steep hills. Also, Italy is a territory with a lot of seismic activity every year, and that's something you can't ignore when you send trains at 300 km/h.
There are so many Germans on YouTube mocking both the lack of time precisiin as well as the pricing schedule where to get reasonably priced tickets is you have to book them three months in advance
No the trick is to get one of the first x% of tickets sold to exactly that train.
Well, mostly; being early also has some influence but the amount of unsold seats is far more important.
As a German, I always loved the long distance trains I. Italy. I remember a trip in 2008 crossing From south to North Italy which cost a fraction of what it would have in Germany. It had A/C and it was on time. So comfy. Meanwhile in Germany, they charged a shitton of money and it had no A/C.
Still last year I found it much better than in Germany, overall. The only thing that PISSES me off is that the stupid Trenitalia does not show me which platform the train is departing/arriving from. It blows my mind that this CRUCIAL information is not shown anywhere and you literally have to be standing in the station to hopefully find it.
>The only thing that PISSES me off is that the stupid Trenitalia does not show me which platform the train is departing/arriving from. It blows my mind that this CRUCIAL information is not shown anywhere and you literally have to be standing in the station to hopefully find it.
The Trenitalia app shows arrival and departure platform and time info per station, as well as for trips you are currently taking.
There is also this gem of a website, no TLS and with 2007 iPhone 1.0 design language, but it works:
When I toured Germany in the 1980s with a train pass, there were clocks all over the train stations. If the train was scheduled to start at 11:07, when the big hand clicked to 7, the train started to move.
It was wonderful.
BTW, the D community is all over the world. We schedule a zoom meeting each month. When we began the meetings, and the meeting started at, say, 8, the meeting organizer would say "we need to wait a bit for the rest to join us". I put my foot down and said when the meeting is scheduled for 8, it starts at exactly 8.
And everyone shows up on time! It's amazing how that works.
Fun fact, all train clocks in Germany synchronize ever minute. That's why the second hand freezes every minute: its actually set to be a bit too fast, and then gets held at the top until the radio signal comes to let it continue.
When I worked at Boeing, we'd have a meeting now and then in a meeting room. The engineers showed up on time. The lead engineers showed up 10m late. The supervisor showed up 30m late. Anyone higher up, even later.
This was never discussed, but the pattern was the same every meeting.
That is why I do not like the American traffic signaling system. When the light turns red cross traffic has a two to three second delay. My feeling is that if people knew the cross traffic would go immediately when the light turned red they would certainly stop. But right now they know there's a buffer so they just run the red light.
This was the biggest culture shock for me coming from military aviation to software. In the former, a brief starts exactly on time, down to the second. "5-4-3-2-1-hack. Time is 0800."
I think I'd get tarred and feathered if I did that at my company.
> I think I'd get tarred and feathered if I did that at my company.
The problem with it is the boss. Too many bosses show their dominance by how much they can force underlings to wait for them. The boss is quite capable of starting the meetings on time, and the rest will work out.
I do the same thing with chronically late people. I simply don't wait for them. The problem resolves itself.
I was going to write a very snarky reply, but you seem much more experienced than me, so I thought about it a little bit. My point remains, but the snark goes away. And I'm in Germany and people wait 5 minutes before starting. In all regular seminars, people start at 5 past. It's because it is assumed that people have another meeting or seminar till the hour before. Same with meetings. Only in conferences do people start at the dot.
I think it is when systems fail, people stop responding to systems, and this is what is happening in Germany right now.
The punctuality of the trains has been more of a joke for quite a bit, I don't think it's a big part of German identity.
The part that is really terrible are the long-distance trains. Not that the regional trains are always punctual, their reliability varies a lot per route. But they're not as bad as the long-distance trains.
One big recent improvement is the Germany ticket, for 58 EUR per month you can take any regional train or bus.
I got the impression they have a different cultural definition of "late" -- they'd get as mad about a 15 minute delay as folks in the states would get about an hour plus delay.
Maybe twenty years ago, but these days it's pretty common to have hour-long delays, or to have trains be cancelled at short notice, or rearranged such that you won't get a connection. When traveling East/West, I'd pretty much always recommend planning a buffer of at least an hour, more if your journey involves connections.
Is this an old article? They haven't consistently run on time for around a decade. The service is no better than supposedly worse trains in say the UK and is nowhere near say Korea's train system.
The last time I caught a train in Germany I remember having to wait on a freezing platform for ~ 3 hours until they gave up on the train and got us a coach and drove us to Hamburg...that was ~ 9 years ago.
I don't remember having the same issue in Netherlands though.
On the other hand I've been in Japan for a long time, I honestly don't remember a single train being late in all that time.
Readit News
But for many software engineer this is not a big surprise: everyone knows that accumulating tech debt and neglecting maintence will eventually bite back sooner or later.
Not to excuse the German performance, but part of the reason is that the Italian high-speed railway network is significantly simpler than the German one, also in terms of interconnections with neighbouring countries:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italy_TAV.png#/media...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICE_Network.png#/med...
Still last year I found it much better than in Germany, overall. The only thing that PISSES me off is that the stupid Trenitalia does not show me which platform the train is departing/arriving from. It blows my mind that this CRUCIAL information is not shown anywhere and you literally have to be standing in the station to hopefully find it.
The Trenitalia app shows arrival and departure platform and time info per station, as well as for trips you are currently taking.
There is also this gem of a website, no TLS and with 2007 iPhone 1.0 design language, but it works:
http://www.viaggiatreno.it/infomobilitamobile/pages/cercaTre...
In which city?
YMMV
It was wonderful.
BTW, the D community is all over the world. We schedule a zoom meeting each month. When we began the meetings, and the meeting started at, say, 8, the meeting organizer would say "we need to wait a bit for the rest to join us". I put my foot down and said when the meeting is scheduled for 8, it starts at exactly 8.
And everyone shows up on time! It's amazing how that works.
https://youtu.be/Er5VIgJqvtg
Deleted Comment
This was never discussed, but the pattern was the same every meeting.
I seriously disliked that nonsense.
I think I'd get tarred and feathered if I did that at my company.
The problem with it is the boss. Too many bosses show their dominance by how much they can force underlings to wait for them. The boss is quite capable of starting the meetings on time, and the rest will work out.
I do the same thing with chronically late people. I simply don't wait for them. The problem resolves itself.
I think it is when systems fail, people stop responding to systems, and this is what is happening in Germany right now.
The part that is really terrible are the long-distance trains. Not that the regional trains are always punctual, their reliability varies a lot per route. But they're not as bad as the long-distance trains.
One big recent improvement is the Germany ticket, for 58 EUR per month you can take any regional train or bus.
In my recent experience the most punctual trains I’ve taken have been long-distance ones, namely IC (as opposed to ICE). Not sure why, though.
I live in Germany and I sent the article to my former manager. His response, verbatim, was this:
"This pisses me off so deeply".
I went on to muse about the "academic quarter hour" and that now "six minutes is now German standard lateness".
All in good faith, and hell of a lot of fun.
The last time I caught a train in Germany I remember having to wait on a freezing platform for ~ 3 hours until they gave up on the train and got us a coach and drove us to Hamburg...that was ~ 9 years ago.
I don't remember having the same issue in Netherlands though.
On the other hand I've been in Japan for a long time, I honestly don't remember a single train being late in all that time.