Here in my country we wish we had trains like Germany's.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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We're just seeing the 2018 ones in US arriving now /s
but it worked on the spreadsheet where the lack of maintenance in the lines doesn't cause issues, no personnel is ever sick, and people deboard and board the train in a microsecond
- manager at DB
Me, an American: “You guys have public transportation?”
Train is canceled today. Here's a voucher for a Nazi-owned taxi company that'll get you halfway home.
Cannot confirm from the DB reports which put it at about 90% punctuality overall.
But this got me to look up the UK statistics - when I was growing up it was always a stereotype that UK trains sucked and German trains were great. Today, the three minute punctuality of UK trains is 85%, and the 15 minute punctuality is 98%. From that we could subtract cancellations, which are at around 3-4%.
DB breaks it out by regional and long-distance trains though (long-distance is much worse, less than 70% on these reports)
https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/
Their metric for punctuality isn't realistic. If your train is late by just a couple minutes you could already be missing your connecting trains, or suffer so much stress your day is ruined before it can properly begin.
A couple of minutes delay almost never causes a missed connection in the UK, because connection times that the route planning service uses are more generous than that. You'd have to be quite unlucky: probably a combination of a connection from one end of the station to another and a mobility issue. Connection times are built around this scenario, but I don't think they build in slack for it.
I get travel anxiety but have never had my day "ruined" by a couple of minutes delay. It sounds like you might mean that the metric isn't useful for the very narrow scenario of someone who will get crippling anxiety from that, which is fair enough, but that doesn't make it "unrealistic".
They figured out a loophole to improve the statistics: a train can't be late if it never arrives.
Check out the french way: trains regularly 5-15 minutes late? Just add 20 minutes to the arrival time.
It does work through 😁
In Wellington, NZ is the busses and trains are often late, but they run every 5-20 mins and they have electronic boards telling you when they are estimated to arrive based on real time tracking, so it's not a big deal when you can just show up and one won't be far away.
We got that on busses too, but the trains I was referring to are like 2h trains that go 500km.
Ah right. Yeah we don't have a lot those, we have a hub and spoke system of commuter trains, with gaps filled with busses.
Wellington is services by a couple of weekday trains from neighbouring cities, that are each approx 2 hours away (slow ones, travelling around 150km distance in that time). Of those trains, one only runs once a day and not at all on weekend, and the other is only like 4 a day and 2 on weekends. Intercity rail is not that good here. You can get Wellington<->Auckland (two biggest cities) but it's priced for tourists not commuters (goes pasts mountains etc). Plus is a whole day's travel, we don't have fast trains.
Iirc for the DB a train is considered on time when it's not later than 7 min on arrival. Which is a joke if you miss your following connection.
A train that doesn't arrive at all is also not considered late.
they abuse this mechanic to catch up on late trains, by stopping their trains a couple stops before the end stop and turning them around to drive the other direction, now not late anymore.
The Pofalla-turnaround, named after a politician
I have this same argument with my spouse. If fifteen minutes late is "on time", then change the arrival time and just be on time.
Ah, the Ryanair approach. But unreliable arrival times are annoying for passengers and a drain. Sure, build in a small amount of slack, but a functioning train system should be able to get to 90% punctuality without adding 15 minutes of slack everywhere.
Luckily the next train you have to take is also late, so nothing really changes. A system so broken that it works "perfectly".
Having been on a delayed German train, my connection actually waited so that everyone on my train connecting to it could catch it...
That obviously can’t be done regularly without impacting the whole system though. Meaning either that’s why they’re always late everywhere, or that doesn’t happen very frequently
It can happen if delays are rare, yeah
I am terrorised by the Deutsche Bahn so much, when I first visited GB I thought their rail service is amazing.
3rd biggest country by GDP btw. I guess that' what you get for voting conservatives for 20+ years.
3rd biggest country by GDP btw
Thought this was japan but looks like they passed them in 2023. Still miles behind in trains though.
Could be worse though, California has a similar size economy to both and has been struggling to build a single HSR line for decades.
20years? Bro it was conservatives since thw founding in '49 with like two or three exceptions
The expected delayed effect of austerity politics that were so successfully exported throughout the European Union with great efficiency and cruelty.
It’s a friendly rivalry among many European countries to boast about how shitty their railway companies are.
Americans are not invited to this conversation.
USAians have functioning railways? Before Turamp became president, I wanted to visit and looked up whether there were any trains to the places I wanted to go - it was abysmal. If there was a train, it was once a week or something, slow af and stopped very far from wherever I would've wanted to visit.
Their railway system was a joke back then and probably is even worse by now. Last I read about any improvements to it was some highspeed train planned to be built between San Francisco and Los Angeles (or something) and it being delayed by NIMBYs and unwilling governors paid off by the car lobbies. I fully expect it to be (or have been) cancelled.
We were actually in the process of improving it under Biden (funds had been allocated and a corridor or two got better trains). But yeah, there are major cities that get a weekly train that arrives at 2am
I think they were making the same point
Good point
Thanks. I live a couple houses away from a rail line that doesnt transport humans.
But but America!
The fuck are you on about?
Not so long ago I read an article about how Trenitalia is among the best European rail companies in all the metrics, from price-quality to delays (or lack thereof).
Italians complain about trenitalia as if it were a national sport and they rarely can't understand that the country has one of the best railway systems of Europe. This kind of news about other European rail companies are always a joy to share with an Italian "tossing down the calendar" (Italian idiom for saying blasphemies) about trenitalia because they simply can't process it.
In Slovenia, our trains are 4 hours late and we're grateful for it!
He means the forms you have to fill out to get your compensation rejected.
Sitting in a train right now. It started half an hour late and on top of that we have to drive a detour because of an accident on the tracks. Ah well.
India: rookie numbers.
Anyway, are those long distance/intercity trains or local/metro/intracity trains?
More often long distance. If your train starts to run late, you lose priority to other trains in time and it spirals. 20->30->60->… 5 hours and transferring to other trains. Its cooked
Long distance is worse then regional lines iirc.
Regional is mostly okay, but every now and then there is one not arriving at all
I’d rank it long distance, regional, then s-Bahn in terms of least to most reliable. But when s-Bahn shits itself, it takes the whole system down (in Munich at least).
Probably everything. For local trains, even Berlin is at above 90% reliability.
DB trains made me appreciate the reliability and punctuality of air planes ...
I understand the whole “it has to get worse before it gets better” angle when some railway sections have to be closed for a complete overhaul, but I feel like there’s an infrastructure equivalent to refeeding syndrome.
When your body has to make do with little-to-no food, it restructures its metabolism to deal with that. When you suddenly increase your food intake again, it can’t deal with that and you die. Instead, food intake must be slowly ramped up.
When an infrastructure provider has little money for repairs, they tend to take their most urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs, rank them, and do the absolutely most urgent “cannot be postponed” ones first. When they suddenly receive more money, there is a tendency to abandon this ranking system because all of these repairs are urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs and they no longer need to be ranked… which leads to collapse because of course the primary, the backup and the other backup route are being repaired at the same time, all three are in need of urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs!
I think the management structures of infrastructure providers should take this into account when a budget increase comes their way.
Their strategy so far is to close and overhaul lines completely. I think it is somewhat fair to expect that's cheaper and faster than overhauling one side at a time. They prioritize by traffic and urgency of overhauls. It is a solid strategy - but it comes with major disruptions of long distance travel