Anyone who might be surprised that Germany is so low here, Germans are always surprised people think it would be very high.
There is a simple reason, too: Auto-Lobby. Our car manufacturers are very powerful in politics and public infrastructure is heavily underfunded.
Funnily enough, highways and other roads are also crumbling, so good luck to the car makers when there is less and less road to drive those precious machines on.
I would say the root cause of the DB issues is rather the failed attempt to privatise it, which caused years decades of infrastructure underinvestment to cook the books to make it look more attractive to private investors.
But of course the strong car lobby also played a role in that.
This is the main reason. While the car lobby is no doubt dangerously powerful they are also heavily dependant on the cargo department of DB. A massive amount of industrial commodities is moved by the railway network and not the ubiquitous trucks. If they worked to defund the railway infrastructure they would eventually hurt their own supply lines.
Yes, hence me saying “failed”. They cooked the books because they wanted to put it up for sale on the stock market, but in the end that never happend for a lot of different reasons.
But they are organised as and run like a private company and driven purely by short term profits and will pay big time bonuses to their executives (usually ex polititians) every year.
Additionally, the number presented is most likely too high, since it’s more important to tune the numbers than to provide good service.
Example: a late train can be taken out of service and replaced, or even not. Voila! Not late anymore.
I wish this wasn’t the reality.
I spent nearly a quarter century working for a German company.
The Germans think about the Swiss the same way we think about the Germans.
I mean you are still building massive highways. Most european countries aren’t building highways anymore.
Not really. It’s mostly maintenance and only a few new projects due to shifting demand.
America is much the same in that regard. We have probably the most laughably terrible train network, both in terms of freight and passenger, for any western country, especially relative to any meaningful metric like GDP. It’s down to a noxious mix of car lobby, racism, and stupid policy choices (single family housing exclusive zoning, parking minimums, etc) all applied consistently over 70 years. In spite of all that, and in spite of increasingly enormous re-investment packages, our roads never really seem to get much better. I hope it’s the same in Germany, but I’ve noticed that having better mobility solutions than cars and planes only is quickly becoming a pretty mainstream position in the US.
Fun fact: German ICEs (high-speed trains) are not allowed to enter Switzerland if they are delayed too much so they don’t disrupt the Swiss schedule. This year more than 10% were not allowed to continue.
It’s super funny because at swiss train station they always say
“Train X is delayed by Y minutes, this is due to delays in France/Germany and not the Swiss railways” on the megaphone LOL
The Swiss railway network is nuts. From Not Just Bikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc
German long distance trains are 64% on time because up to 5 minutes delay are not counted for the statistics and guess what? Trains that never arrive (due to being way too late to continue their journey or because of technical problems on the trains or track system) are not included in the statistics either!
The infamous Scheuer-Wende.
For the non germans: say a train is supposed to go from Munich over Hamburg to Kiel, and then return back to Munich. If that train accumulates so much delay that it could not even start the return trip on time, it might just stop in Hamburg, dump all the passengers, and turn around heading to Munich.
Now the skipped stops don’t count as delayed, since the train never stopped there, the train is on time again for the return trip, and hundreds of passengers are pissed off and stranded somewhere they never wanted to be.
Ah yes, the 12 countries of Europe.
Yeah Is Slovenia the worst in europe or 12th best? Most probably it’s just random which countries are in the graph.
In Belgium trains are considered on time when up to a 6 minute delay, but what really schews the statistics is that cancelled trains are not counted. Even so, the number in this overview is completely incorrect. It was 87,5% on time in 2023.
trains that are “cancelled” are not counted in germany, at least by train companies and politics, everyone else counts them as betrayals. sometimes trains are cancelled officially, just to arrive later with the same engine, wagons, staff and guests but under another train number just to not show up as that bad delayed any more, because its officially (renamed to) another train then!! that seems to happen on very few routes only, however, trains that are late would regulary never arrive at their final destination but be told to turn around and skip some stops to catch up with their time schedule at those stops the train is counted as cancelled => which is not counted then. bonus: the company knows the delay sometimes hours before that turn around to skip some stops, while people at those stops are left olone thinking that train will arrive until shortly before it should arrive only to be told that it will never arrive. sometimes trains show up as arriving in 2 minutes, then 1 … then now … and its gone! … without any train passing by (mainly at remote locations with only 2 platforms or trams do that regulary too) guess those ghost trains are good for statistics, counts as in time, but does not use any space nor repairs, neither energy, and cannot be delayed by broken tracks or engine failures, also company does not have to pay for the driver of ghost trains. sometimes when the arrival platforms are changed for a train, someone through the speaker says, the train will arrive on platform 7, while the displays show it to have been changed to platform 2, and you have 1,5 minutes to get it after the first note from the company (bonus: sometimes both platforms told to you are wrong, then the train arrives (maybe) on the original platform that is empty bcs all ran to either 2 or 7)
when visiting other countries in europe, nearly everywhere i love how good public transport works (maybe in spain not that much) but in gemany its way too many lies delays, absurd rules a.s.o.
