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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

Progression:

In Japan, people are nervous if a train departs early/late by 30 seconds.

In Switzerland, people are nervous when a train is 2 minutes late.

In Germany, people are nervous when a train is 10 minutes late (unless you are passing through Frankfurt, where you can expect 30 minutes)

In Italy, people are happy a train shows up (hello Naples).

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To be honest, a train leaving early is a lot worse than leaving late. It means you show up at the right time, and you lose it - not cool at all.

Yes, by some quirk of fate I used to do navigation prompting for bus timed-course competitions; professional drivers on an unfamiliar route with a precise schedule to achieve. I'd shout-out current location, upcoming hazards and traffic controls, distance and time to next stop etc

They'd be penalised ( say ) 2 points for each late arrival but 8 for early arrival, and the same for being seen to stop ahead of the specified location.

I only did it for a couple of years but it was very interesting to watch the pros and made me appreciate the difficulties of maintaining schedules.

Very frequently, my train is up to 4 minutes early, and the doors open on the other side of the track, opposite the parking lot, so sometimes I'm totally on time, walking towards it after parking, but it's swooshing in, and I get to stand there, watch as others board...

So yeah, not cool.

Too true. I"ve had this happen at a crucial time and it was very annoying. I spoke to the station master and he said the trains are allowed to leave 20 seconds before the departure time "to keep the trains on time". What???? Sydney, Australia.

>>In Italy, people are happy a train shows up (hello Naples).

Didn't Italians hang the guy that made the trains run on time? What did they expect?

He never actually made the trains run on time. It’s a myth.

I know. Sometime a joke is a joke. Even if trains ran on time I wouldn't advocate fascism as a trade-off.

The S4 in Zürich is usually consistently 4-10 minutes late during evening rush hour.

S4 is part of SZU, who are vastly less reliable than the main Swiss train operator SBB. (Might have something to do with their exotic rolling stock...)

Zürich is the least-Swiss city though ;-)

In the USA, "High speed rail? What's that?"

And our commuter rail is a stream of helpful text alerts:

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 5 minutes."

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 20 minutes."

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 45 minutes."

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 90 minutes."

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) canceled due to equipment problems."

And, of course, the text message saying the 7:10 is delayed by 5 minutes comes in at 7:20.

"Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 5 minutes." "Message 'Train 425 Dpt. Union Station (7:10) delayed 5 minutes.' delayed 10 minutes"

"You'll see in a few years" - California.

> "You'll see in a few years" - California, c. 1992

Fixed that for you.

You know were building a HSR now? It will take 15 - 20 years to complete, but we're building it.

I will believe it when I see it.

Assuming that some day I have a pressing need to travel from Bakersfield to Fresno, that is, because as I understand it there's still no commitment to construct the other parts. Train advocates assume that once the middle part is built the rest will inevitably follow, while train skeptics are looking forward to mocking the puny ridership numbers on the nowhere-to-nowhere line and saying "I told you so".

The skeptics have the advantage of being able to create a self fulfilling prophecy.

Indeed, which is why it was a terrible idea to go ahead with this doomed compromise.

LOL, they can barely manage to extend BART a few extra miles, and it takes decades and $billions to do it.

More like a few decades, and California gets to exhibit an unusually slow and expensive train.

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