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Let us name the actual good things :)

The ICE-Terminal at the airport Frankfurt am Main (FRA) is a bless! I live in the middle of southern Germany. Sitting into the ICE and wait for FRA is joyful. It is more comfortable to reach than Stuttgart and Munich. The only annoying part is the old Stuttgart "Kopfbahnhof" but luckily this will be fixed soon. I'm thankful that the peopledecided to go for this effort, despite Germans fear changes.

Sadly ICE tickets are very expensive. When you travel with more than one person using the car is often better. If I could wish for some things:

    * Affordable inter-city tickets, instead of very cheap local tickets
    * An ICE every 30 Minutes (high frequency, not just high speed)
    * Therefore Deutsche Lufthansa can focus more on mid- and long range flights. They prefer that and complement with the Deutsche Bahn.
    * As rpadovani I hope for a connection Brenner Base Tunnel
    * Munich should also become through station "Durchgangsbahnhof". These "Kopfbahnhof" thing is a weird concept from the old kingdoms and doesn't make sense. Even in Paris this concept is questionable.
    * Please Germans. Get more courage and appreciate useful changes. From windmills, airport runways or train lines. It is not about ruining the landscape.

For entertainment, the (in)famous speech of Edmund Stoiber about the Transrapid. It is weird for native speakers, too.

https://youtu.be/f7TboWvVERU

I remember as kid that some people dreamed about the Transrapid (a high speed train, hovering with magnets). The politician above wanted to connect Munich Central-Station with Munich Airport (FJS) with it because the local trains are a pitty.

> * An ICE every 30 Minutes (high frequency, not just high speed)

That's part of a long term infrastructure project dubbed "Deutschlandtakt": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandtakt

The current estimate is that the overall project will take until ~2040 (though I think we all know how that'll go) with ongoing improvements to frequency on individual lines.

Yeah, going from Frankfurt with the ICE is almost like taking the taking the bus around the corner. They definitely did something right there

I own a car and that’s single reliable mean of transportation in/around Munich. Airport line causes me always the stress since I am not sure if I am in the right part of the train or I will go to Freising. I double check it, triple check. Repeat dozen times and can relax only when train enters airport area.

As you mentioned - additional tracks through the city center are re-planned for 203x, but with current handicap on all planing and execution levels it will realistically be finished at 2050. It makes public transportation completely unreliable since the city is heavily overcrowded already. Absolutely the same story with S7 extension from Wolfratshausen to Geretsried. No way to build anything before 2040.

Let’s face the true, Germany lost grip on infrastructure projects. The fight against car goes on without offering any alternatives. In theory my journey to the office takes 10 minutes more on the train than with a car. In reality I don’t know where train gets stuck and for how long.

> Airport line causes me always the stress since I am not sure if I am in the right part of the train or I will go to Freising

That is usually apparent IMO, what do you find stressful? Having trains that split is quite common in my experience.

> It makes public transportation completely unreliable since the city is heavily overcrowded already.

That's very true. And with the 9-euro tickets, rush hours are a nightmare (and it is extremely hot these days).

> Let’s face the true, Germany lost grip on infrastructure projects.

I'm afraid that's very true as well. Coming from Italy, I expected big things from Germany, but HST is way better in Italy, to my surprise.

On a brighter note, it seems that in the last years they are accelerating on infrastructure again, both local and national. It will take years, if not decades, to see the results. However, as the says goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

Let's also call out the origins (at least partly) for this mess. Which is the obsession with a balanced budget, mainly originating with former finance minister Schäuble. The last 20 years of extremely low interest rates would have been ideal to use essentially free money (government bonds were typically below inflation) to build German infrastructure. Instead Schäuble used weird anologies to your neighbor who should not spend over their budget (the German expression is Milchmädchenrechnung) to convince people that taking out loans is a bad thing for governments. Such a lost opportunity, Germany could be so much further along in their transition to renewables, could have one of the best public transport systems in the world and that essentially and no cost for the loaning the money. Instead it has a dependence on Russian gas, destroyed renewables industry (which used to be World leading), and public transport infrastructure which is desperate for investment just when we are coming into a recession.

This reminds me how a lot of value is actually collectively created and corporations are just there to efficiently make use of government provided infrastructure. Some people got this idea that private individuals create all the value but if that were true everyone would be self employed. A debt brake basically means less gov bonds which means the same money is bidding up fewer bonds. The idea behind this is that private lending will pick up because of the lower interest rate, the irony of course is that due to the zero lower bound, there is no real point behind lower interest rates.

Fully agreed, and same goes for the Autobahn. Foreigners think it’s some super high speed no limit highway, but over 50% of the time you’ll be under a very conservative speed limit due to ongoing construction. Of course, you never actually see anyone working, it’s like they start the project and just leave it for months at a time.

Wow 20 minutes per train.

Here in Barcelona it's 2-3 minutes between trains. The metro is faster than driving if you're on the same line.

In Munich (as in many other German cities) there are two different systems: S-Bahn, managed by DB (the national railway operator), and U-Bahn, that is your standard subway, managed by a local company (MVG in Munich).

The S-Bahn in Munich has only one track in the city center, so there are trains every 3-4 minutes, 20 minutes is on the outskirt.

U-Bahn has a 10-minute cadence in the outskirt, and 5-minute on rush hours: in the city center 6 lines become 3, so in there you have 5-minute cadence, and 2.5-minute in the rush hour.

I live near both stations, S-Bahn is the quicker way to go to my office, but being the station in the outskirt, I need to know when trains are coming.

Thanks I didn't know the distinction.

We also have something similar here for more long distance and less city stations. In fact we have two operators with their own networks! Both are not nearly as frequent or reliable as the metro, sadly.

I could be mistaken, but what OP is mentioning might be closer to Renfe rodalies/cercanías than the metro (U-bahn). Maybe somebody from Munich can elaborate. Surely U-bahn is not running every 20 minutes in Munich, right?

Yeah I get it, I've never been to Munich so I didn't know that.

Rodalies is also more like 20 minutes (If you're lucky and it comes at all - lol)

Indeed, I explained better here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222401

Sorry for the confusion!

you can do 2-3 minutes per train when every line has their dedicated tracks. with 7 lines sharing one track in the city center each train can't do better than 7*2 to 7*3, that is 14 to 21 minutes per train.

Unfortunately doubling rail in cities means you have to demolish whole swaths of the city. Even the Japanese have these problems with their Shinkansen. There is no space unless you go underground.

Yeah, they want to do everything underground, but they really miscalculated completion time and costs.