Comment by lqet
1 year ago
To put this a bit into perspective: long-distance trains in Germany typically travel for at least half a day. "Long-distance" trains in Switzerland can be compared to regional lines in Germany (the country simply isn't that large, and the majority of rail travel in Switzerland happens between Zurich/Olten/Berne/Basel, which are all within 100 km of each other). The likelihood of anything going wrong during a 1:30h train journey from Zurich to Basel is simply much lower than during a 10 hour train journey from Kiel to Freiburg. 3 minutes delay on a 1:30h train journey is a delay of 3.3%, 15 mins delay on a 10 hour train journey is a delay of 2.5%.
The reason regional trains are also delayed is that regional lines, local lines, long distance lines and freight trains are typically using the same tracks in Germany, and delayed long distance trains always get higher priority. A typical situation is that your regional train is perfectly on time, but suddenly stops, and waits for 5-10 minutes for a delayed long-distance train to overtake it. Switzerland has a similar mixed system, but as noted above, does not really have long-distance rail lines, apart from the trains that enter from Italy, Austria, France and Germany, which is the main reason why these trains are not allowed to enter if delayed. This is in contrast to the system in France, where TGV lines typically have dedicated high-speed tracks, where all trains on it travel more or less at the same speed.
Shouldn't you then add redundancy to the system by having time buffers at large stops every 2-3 hours? Or even let replacement trains start at intermediate stops as soon as the delay of the regular train is greater than X to avoid propagation of the delay into to rest of the network? Absolutely, but most stations and rail lines in Germany are either at their operational limit, or above. Having a train wait for 15 minutes in a large station just in case it is delayed would block that track for 15 minutes in the majority of cases, when the train is punctual. Also, DB simply has not enough rolling material to start replacement trains, and the rail infrastructure to even park such trains has largely been dismantled in the years after the privatization (they are doing it sometimes, but not very often).
As someone who used to travel regularly between Zurich and Frankfurt (Zurich - Hamburg line ICE) I can 100% tell you that distance is *NOT* the root cause of DB's reliability problems. Infrastructure decline is. From lack of electrification, badly maintained rolling stock, insufficient tracks you find everything. Swiss railways deal with problems like lack of capacity and geography. Deutsche Bahn deals with a lack of maintenance and investment.
Maybe you are not aware, but swiss trains dont go back to sleep after they arrive at a destination. They stop for 3-5 minutes, and then continue to their next destination. All day long, from morning till evening. Geneve to St. Gallen with like a dozen stops is pretty long way. Especially when you drive it 6 times a day.
Also generally the length of the tracks dont magically change. It is possible to create a timetable: which train should be where when, and then stick to it.
Note that before the DB, SBB were anoyed with some models of french or italien trains, which broke down regularly, putting too much pressure on the integrated timetable.
To put this into a bit of perspective, DB once was much better:
[0](https://www.france24.com/en/20180322-record-2017-deutsche-ba...)
Fyi, it's actually easier for trains to be on time the longer the journey is - that's because sane travel times aren't calculated at max speeds. So if there is any delay, you can go at a higher speed than what was used in the calculation to catch up. On shorter journeys there are simply fewer opportunities to catch up.
Now, I wouldn't be exactly shocked if DB using too high speed assumptions in their stated travel times was part of their problem with delays.
Slightly longer stops solves the problem. :-/
Increasing timetable ride time between stations too (beyond actual needed time). The Dutch railways do that a lot.
DB is in major crisis with the workforce with tens of thousands of boomers retiring soon. They don’t have enough people for any redundancy.
is this specific to DB only? I feel like Germany needs a lot of workforce at German quality but no way they can fill that with any type of foreign immigration. They lowered a lot of immigration requirements to entry because of this. But still it will be not enough. It's a cultural thing and low wages in Germany can't fix it.
The language is a big problem. They can get quality immigrants, but convincing those quality immigrants to learn German is a big task. A lot of people would rather go to US with all it's uncertainty than stay in Germany due to these issues.
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Well, we just got one million of Ukrainian refugees, half of which is not going to return home according to dome polls, but you are right, the demographics cannot be fixed by immigration alone. I myself currently work on a corporate healthcare project with the goal to reduce sick leaves and reduce health-related early retirements. The parental benefits in Germany are quite generous, but it all breaks into the growing cost of living wall. Everyone understands what’s going on and the urgency, but real solutions are yet to be found.
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>low wages in Germany
Don't forget the absurdly high social expenditures and taxes. You only keep like 40% of your money and it's on track to get even worse.
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And now because of German needs eastern and south-easthern EU countries are in even worse position because Germany has hoovered up a decent chunk of skilled younger workforce.
We have started to import unskilled/low skilled laborers from SE Asia en masse to keep the country barely running. But the quality is going downhill yet prices of goods and real estate are soaring.
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And how many passengers are on those 10h+ train rides that you compare to?
Because your entire point is that most passengers in Switzerland travels on those short distances. How are the riders distributed in Germany?
Esspecially pro enviroment prefer such rides (but air lines are much cheaper, I only took a train from Munich to Hamburg)
I think people in general choose the most efficient mode of transport.
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