Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

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> Meanwhile, Deutsche Bahn AG hopes to attract 200 million long-distance rail passengers by 2030, an increase of 35%.

Good luck with that. DB neither has the rolling material [0], nor reliable companies to build that rolling material [1], nor the infrastructure [2], nor the personnel [3] to provide reliable service for the passenger numbers of today. It remains a complete mystery how they will solve problems that have been decades in the making since the privatization and increase their passenger numbers by 35% in just 10 years. To anyone who regularly travels with DB (and to much of their own, frustrated [4] personnel) these plans sound preposterous. It's exactly the same kind of growth- and revenue-oriented MBA daydreaming that brought the company down to the alarming state it is in today.

[0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-bahn-...

[1] https://www.wiwo.de/my/unternehmen/dienstleister/bombardier-...

[2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-konsumgueter...

[3] https://www.spiegel.de/karriere/deutsche-bahn-zugausfaelle-w...

[4] https://www.derwesten.de/wirtschaft/70-prozent-der-bahn-mita...

Those problems are solvable. If they focus on them all now they can get there.

There are several companies in the world making good rolling stock. There is a fairly long leadtime, which means they better be making orders today to get the rolling stock they need in time. Good rolling stock is of course a requirement to increase passenger count.

Infrastructure can be built and rebuilt. The know how exists in the world, it just needs money and a bit of time (the more money the less time)

These two need to start today. However some smart planning and priorities the places where the most gains can be had. Doubling ridership in a small but busy section is often easier than doing the whole system and can add up to 35% overall increases even though the rest of the system is slightly down. This could be doable in 10 years. (then you focus on the next small part of the system and bring that up, while continuing to keep service high on the first, and soon your network is useful)

People can be hired and trained. The right people will make it work. That is management, and maintenance, and operations.

They have 8 years to do the above: it typically takes 2 years for riders to respond to better service once it exists. It is a hard problem for sure, but if they have the money and will it can be done. That is a rather large if though, and I don't know if they do)

> People can be hired and trained. The right people will make it work.

This is a huge part of the problem. Decades of mismanagement have led to many competent people leaving the company. Replacing them with good people is now very difficult for DB, because by now, the company's reputation is so bad that talented potential employees are hesitant to go there. They are already lowering their hiring standards to get at least someone, but I very much doubt that this is the way to hire the "right" people. I expect it will even drive more competent people out.

On the surface it seems like such a simple thing to make - a box on some metal wheels. Why is it such an accomplishment to make "good rolling stock?"

A house is a simple thing, being a wooden or brick box? A car is also a box on wheels? A rocket is just a metal cylinder? </sarcasm> - could we at least try to think or research before posting the middlebrow dismissal?

A passenger rail car is more like a house or very large caravan. In addition to all the engineering below the body (wheels, suspension, vacuum brakes, coupling), you've got a large superstructure with windows, plumbing, electrics, HVAC, power-operated doors, and design considerations of accesability and crash safety as well as comfort.

They generally need a special site to be built on (unless you want to ship them by road, which can be done but is inconvenient) and some heavy capital equipment.

The UK built bus-on-rail conversions to cover a period of national poverty; the notorious "Pacers". They were uncomfortable and unpopular.

A house IS a simple thing - it is not the case that you only have a few companies in the world that make a "good one."

To me the thing that separates rail from cars or other vehicles is that they have the advantage of having railroads, and so I would think that they can make additional assumptions that cars can't. They don't need the steering column for example, or make too much fuss about differentials.

And yet, the fact that cars are commoditized, but there are only a few good rolling stock companies in the whole world makes me wonder what I am missing. Maybe the demand/volume is just so low that there is no opportunity to commoditize or create a huge market.

There is limited demand. Rail cars are expected to last for 30 years (with a couple significant refurbishments), and carry hundreds of people at a time over limited routes. Road cars last about 12 years (average as I recall), and carry only a couple people just about anywhere.

The result of this is society buys a lot more road cars than rail cars, and so there is a lot more scale and a lot more companies making them.

I was in a train in the UK they other day that I swear had a big diesel engine and a clutch and my first thought was that someone had converted a coach to a train. I thought all trains that were diesels would be diesel electric but apparently that was wrong.

It isn't much an accomplishment, but it is required. When you have 50 year old wore out cars (I have no idea how old the cars in question are), or a newer car but it turns out the design has a flaw you have a problem.

There are only a few companies making rolling stock. Some of them have better designs than others. All have only so much space in their factories to produce more. All have looked at demand to in some way and made decisions about what sort of capacity to build cars they should invest in. (I don't know which have done a good job here). There are a bunch of different standards that rolling stock has to meet - wheels, safety: not all factories can deliver cars that will work, but they have several choices that will work. Sometimes local laws limit what factories you can buy from (buy American has increased costs in the US - but that obviously doesn't apply here)

It comes down to this: they order some rail stock today and in 5 years have some cars. They might be able to get the cars sooner by selecting a different factory to order from (cost and quality are both in play here).

Depending on the country, there are significant requirements on the "box" regarding how much it compresses end-to-end in case of accidents. "Crush" requirements are in the range of hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, IIRC. They are especially high for passenger cars operating on the same tracks as freight.

The normal size of this box is so big, it can carry several autos. When you put passengers inside, there are various required features, such as anti-climb mechanisms [1] to keep the casualties down in a crash.

Selling boxes to the organizations that buy them is different depending on the box. It seems to me that the process for rail cars is much longer and involves more public meetings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EN_15227 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_(rail_cars)

The process generally is complex, but it need not be. The anti-climb is pretty much universal and so all cars have it, as are most other safety features. You could save a lot of money by ordering what someone else already did (changing only the paint scheme). Often though someone makes what seems like minor changes to requirements, but the end result is engineers have to redesign large parts of the car and that drives up price - both because of the redesign and all the new jigs need to be made just for your car that will never be reused.

It is a shame, France has great rail, the Netherlands as well. My last experiences with traveling long train distances with DB rail were pretty abysmal. Resulting in taxi rides payed by DB themselves. I’ve even considered going back to buses. Although trains as much preferable to buses and planes, Connections are not an issue (usually).

Meanwhile here in the UK we have a fine rail network suitable for the 1910s. We finally upgraded to 1970s speeds in the 2000s -- deliberately avoiding 1980s speeds. HS2 might not be made available at all, let alone to the more northerly bits of the country. That nice Mr Beeching threw away half the network in the 1960s.

It shames us to see our closest neighbours do rail so well -- especially when the demand is there, it's just political will that's missing.

Ah, that brings back memories. Boarding a direct international train from Zurich to Amsterdam, only to have the train terminate at Frankfurt airport because of congestion problems up ahead (spring weather). Then having to wait for hours because a few thousand stranded passengers had to be served by a two-man information desk, then receiving a voucher for a taxi ride that would only take us to the border (wtf), instead of the destination printed on our train ticket. If there had been a plane to NL available at the airport, I would have taken it immediately.

It's a company that advertised a new version of their mobile app with a seemingly proud "Now with delays notification!"...

I would actually like to get __working__ delay notifications. Last I took DB I remember delay notifications be adjusted on a "we exceed the delay already" basis.

Example: train expected at 1200, at 1155 you get a 10 minutes delayed notification. Which will be replaced at 1212 by a 15 minutes delayed notification. Which will be played this way more or less until the train finally arrives.

So you see, a working delay notification would actually be a real improvement. I have not problem with delays in general, but I do like to know if it even makes sense to wait, or if I should get a car or plane ticket to make my schedule.

That's 11 years away. Relatively easy to build a lot of trains and cars by then. There are a lot of companies in Europe and over the world that are eager to bid.

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