Erratic Deutsche Bahn services make our commutes a misery. Luckily, their meaningless announcements are an art form
My favourite excuse is an expression that might one day be emblematic of contemporary Germany. I hear Deutsche Bahn wants staff to stop using it, but it can’t banish it from our minds. Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf – “operational delays” – is meaningful and meaningless in a way that only the German language allows. One day it might even become one of those golden words co-opted into the English language – like zeitgeist or schadenfreude. (Let’s retire Blitz, a word that is jaded and overused in sport, politics and beyond.)
Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf is the magic phrase for not getting anywhere fast while also suggesting everything is full steam ahead. It is sinister in a beautiful way. It is a phrase Kafka might use if he were writing today, a perfect description of a situation where no one can do anything but everyone is busy.
One theory goes that the decline began in the mid-90s, when the government started its efforts to make Deutsche Bahn fit for sale.
Yep, that’ll do it.
Privatising infrastructure is stupid AF. It was part of the 90s Zeitgeist, which haunts us to this day.
Yeah privatization in general doesn’t work great. The only good arguments I’ve heard for private ownership is the initial investment portion.
It does work alright in some fields but it definitely does not work for natural monopolies like infrastructure (rail network, power, gas, internet/phone networks, cable, water, waste water,…) or for things people can’t not choose to avoid buying (health care) or buy very infrequently (once or twice a life only).
Is Deutsche Bahn in private hands? It sounds like the same mistake that Thatcher made in the UK
Also why isnt competiton bringing the prices down?
No, it’s not privatised, although currently organised as a joint-stock company (AG) with the state being the sole shareholder. But it was supposed to be privatised and made “profitable” starting in the 90s.
Japan seems to be one of the outliers were privatisation of their rail networks has worked out well.
It’s not the privatisation per se. It is the privatisation accompanied by a lot of other circumstances bringing the worst of public and private businesses to the table. The main problem is that DB is a private company that is incentivised to let the infrastructure rot. The solution is actually pretty easy: split up the company, return infrastructure to public hand, and open up the operations to fair competition. Flixbus showed how competition absolutely decimates prices even in transport business.
This is more or less what they ended up doing in the UK after rail privatisation, taking the infrastructure back into public hands.
But you can’t have anything like fair competition on train services. It’s not like anyone can just plonk a train on the tracks and outcompete the other trains. They’re awarded franchises, which typically have a monopoly over a particular type of service on those tracks. They can’t be outcompeted, the only way they lose their franchise is if the govt is forced to step in to pick up the pieces (which has happened several times in the UK).
has become
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
TL;DR: Commuting in Germany is terrible und unreliable and the author really liked his idea of comparing Deutsche Bahn to Kafka.
Not sure if that excuse is officially approved for that particular situation, would have to look it up in the official DB excuse catalogue. (Yes, such a thing does in fact exist)
The fact that it exists is not even that bad. As long as it was limited to events like suicides that have good reasons not to talk about them openly I would have no problem with that.
Suicides by train were never announced as suicides. The term before they re-coined it to “Notarzeinsatz am Gleis” (roughly translates to “severe medical emergency near the track”) was “Personenunfall” (accident involving a person).
I know someone who works as a conductor for DB, he once showed me the smartphone app they use for organisation and internal communication, it literally had a page listing the officially approved excuses for delays and the possible actual causes they are supposed to be used for.
