Comment by JohnMakin
1 year ago
This is so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"
1 year ago
This is so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"
> so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"
New York’s Metro-North and LIRR have 95%+ on-time rates [1]. (EDIT: On time is defined as less than 6 minutes late [2].)
[1] https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-exp...
[2] https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf
That seems... poor? A one in twenty trains late stat will basically mean every person will have to deal with a late train roughly every week?
I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others.
Hopefully that 95% is them being honest about the current state, while they push higher.
> I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others
Sure. But "with a nearly perfect on-time performance of 99.3% on Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines," there isn't much room to hide problems. (LIRR is 96.3%.)
The point is we have systems that have been well built and well maintained. They just don't get coverage because they just work. (The LIRR is far from perfect, mind you. But it's apparently outperforming the DB. You have to get to some of the worst routes during peak conditions to get in the neighbourhood of DB's systemic numbers.)
That is a lot better than the 62% on-time statistic for Deutsche Bahn inter-city travel.
I deal with late trains around two-thirds of my trips. Sometimes up to two hours of delay.
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If true it would beat the 92.5% statistic for Swiss trains that was mentioned in the article.
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My memory from a few months of commuting on LIRR is that on-time is within ten minutes of schedule.
CURRENT TIME: 9:45
NEXT TRAIN: 9:42
STATUS: ON TIME
In your example a train arriving at 9:45 scheduled to arrive at 9:42 would still be on-time in Switzerland.
BART's on-time definition is "within 5 minutes of scheduled arrival at final station". I recall in NYC's Metro that trains would frequently "go express" and start skipping stops at arbitrary moments. Do these systems do this as well and have that definition? I think I now understand why they do this stuff: they're trying to juice metrics because skipping stations speeds up the train a lot.
The correct comparison in this case is probably Amtrak, which has much lower on time rates.
In practice it does feel like basically every single Amtrak is delayed after just a few stops, so I would be shocked if the situation is worse in Germany. However to put some numbers on it, here are Amtrak's own stats: https://www.bts.gov/content/amtrak-time-performance-trends-a.... In the flagship northeast corridor (that's Boston - NYC - Philadelphia - DC) the "on-time" percentage is around 80%, where on-time is within 20 minutes.
In the rest of the country Amtrak blames freight companies for most delays (https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance), and frankly I am inclined to agree with them. Amtrak does not own those lines and does not have priority on them, and the freight companies don't give a shit about anyone. See for example https://www.propublica.org/article/trains-crossing-blocked-k... and the rest of ProPublica's excellent series on the industry.
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The Swiss rail lines are used close to capacity. If a train is too much late, it has follow-on effects on other trains, and the whole railway system can start to run into problems. So for the whole system to work, there can't be any overly late trains. This applies to all trains, not just German trains.
So this doesn't really have anything to do with that single train not being on time, or with differences in culture or something like that, it's about keeping the system running. If you have a system that isn't used at capacity, then it doesn't matter much if individual trains run late, the system itself will still keep on running.
It's absolutely crazy to me! I can see my uber driver on my phone stopping to pick up a pretzel from the convenience store, but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop.
On vacation this summer in europe, all tram stops had estimated arrival times. Ridiculous, 5-10 minutes out at worst, they wouldn't even need the electronic signs, just a placard that says "just skim your phone for a bit, it'll come".
You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.
I unfortunately live in "we used to have trams, most of them were scrapped in favour of bus lines, then the bus lines were scrapped because they were not profitable enough, go buy a car" Europe.
Where is that?
> You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.
Yeah..
Grass is greener I admit.
> but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop.
Not true in New York City. See all the busses and all the stops. Estimated number of passengers and arrival times.
https://bustime.mta.info/#m4
Portland Oregon as well. There are a variety of apps that use the API to get arrival info from Tri Met, and all train stops, and many bus stops, have displays.
I've taken transit in a few US and Canadian cities. Most of the time there was some app that reported the live location of the busses and trains in transit.
Often I could get the data through Transit, but sometimes they have their own app.
https://transitapp.com/
Trams and buses tend to be more unreliable because they use the same streets as cars (sometimes they get extra lanes, but not always). Metros tend to be more reliable in my experience, I can usually trust what it says on the electronic sign (one big exception is Cologne where the metro isn't a real metro and runs on the street half of the time).
However in Cologne, to my big surprise, trams, despite running in the streets and in a real maze of crossings underground, manage to always be on time when I use them. S-Bahns on the other hand, seldom are...
Stadtbahns use the "U" sign for U-Bahn when only part of their network is underground; I guess this is to avoid confusing riders.
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This was belgian coast (long story), trams have dedicated right of way and don't share the street with the cars. Peak tourist season too, which may explain the subway-like frequency.
Yeah, in the US the Chicago 'L' and SF's BART are usually at least honest about any delays. Buses will sometimes just... not come.
North American trains have a huge amount of level crossings, which, predictably, cause tons of accidents when oblivious drivers get hit by trains. Although most of the world considers high speed trains to be incompatible with level crossings, the recently built Brightline in Florida has several level crossings and has already hit many cars. [0][1]
Caltrain routinely has delays due to accidents involving grade crossings. Despite spending decades and hundreds of millions of dollars, they still haven't managed to fully grade separate the line. [2]
Fun fact, Canada's Turbotrain was one of the earliest examples of high speed rail in the world in the 1960s and was even faster than the Shinkansen at the time. However, it hit a truck only one hour into its debut run. This is often cited as the main reason why there's no high speed rail in Canada despite the density and proximity of Toronto and Montreal being ideal for such a line. [3]
[0] https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-beach-county/delray-...
[1] https://wsvn.com/news/local/broward/brightline-train-hits-ca...
[2] https://www.caltrain.com/projects/ccs
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain
Not sure why you'd want to lump all of America in to one category of failure when it's demonstrably untrue. Quick example - BART in the Bay Area has a 92-93% on-time rate.
There must be some definitional trick here (like canceled trains not counting, or something) because my memory of BART (as a daily multi-commuter: home to work, work to sports, sports to home) was frequent moments of "10 CAR SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT / MILLBRAE TRAIN IN FOR-TEE MINUTES" and shit like that. Enough of that in the year 2019 led to me switching to e-bike/car and frequently this is a much faster trip than the train.
Swiss trains define on-time as within 3 minutes of schedule, and this includes all mechanical issues, suicides, etc.
And this includes multi-hour intercity train lines, double-decker trains, trains that stop inside of airports, local trains, everything. If you have just a couple lines in a single city, under a single jurisdiction, with no interdependencies and no freight on the same lines, then of course it gets a lot easier.
The issue is that trains need tracks. Tracks are very expensive and a limited resource. The stricter you are about time the more trains you can pack into a given amount of trackage.
A bus uses a road and doesn't have a problem like that because there is far more road than the buses need.
The Dallas Area Raipd Transit on-time rate is about the same as this Swiss train system at 93%. The Trinity Railway Express is 97%, so higher on-time rate than the Swiss system.
And how do they define “on-time”? In Switzerland a train is considered on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay.
The Trinity Railway defines on time performance for trains as arrival within 5 minutes of schedule[1]. It's not materially different from the Swiss standard.
1: https://ridetrinitymetro.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Serv...
This is by no means true across the country but I’m sure it plays well to the “American public transport sucks” sentiment some folks like to cling to.
Across the whole country it's absolutely true. There are car only distances for a lot of stuff.
Does the US not have an extensive network of Greyhound busses, similar to our FlixBus system? Or is that just something I saw in the movies? (I'm not American)
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That quote sounds like my experience with Deutsche Bahn.
“Missed your connection? Sounds like a you problem.”
"Skill issue"
That's like Italian trains, but it's more like "nobody knows what platform it's gonna be at; keep a look out and run when you see it; also, screw you".