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Comment by witchesindublin | Hacker News Reader

Considering this is from the Economist, I think it is worth to mention the dire state of British railways.

The main reason that Europeans fly (including Brits) is that it's simply the cheapest option, more-so that bus in many cases. Airplanes are pretty much providing services similar or lower than to buses, and trains tend to have better service and also tend to be more comfortable these days. Most airplanes have been reduced to low cost or no-frills status, even the full service ones, and flying is a nightmare in terms of peace-of-mind and comfort.

Deutsche Bahn is one of the better railway operators in Europe, especially compared to the railways in Southern Europe or the UK, but obviously there are a lot of improvements that need to be made.

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> Deutsche Bahn is one of the better railway operators in Europe, especially compared to the railways in Southern Europe or the UK

Are you sure you're not just remembering their old reputation? DB's punctuality and performance has gotten to be terrible lately, I'd say they're well below Trenitalia or Renfe or most of the UK railways at this point. (And complaints about British railways are pretty overstated; prices are bad, but performance is objectively pretty good).

Train performance is abysmal in the north of England. It’s a joke. The trains can barely be relied upon. It’s managed decline of the railways.

Strange, I live in the North of England and that has hardly been my experience of late. Most trains have been at least 1 or 2 minutes late.

In the UK the franchise model is slowly falling apart after Covid gave it a death blow. Lines are being nationalized as the operators extract bonuses for the exec team and finally give up by tanking the service so the government has to step in. Here is the latest.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65555262

Here's Deutsche Bahn for the same month: https://www.ksta.de/wirtschaft/deutsche-bahn-jeder-dritte-fe... - and note they use a much more generous definition of "on time" (up to 6 minutes late) than the UK does. And they don't seem to even be publishing the number of cancellations, which are specifically excluded from that delay figure.

Obligatory mention of a great talk on the topic: "David Kriesel: BahnMining -- Pünktlichkeit ist eine Zier" (2019)

English translation: https://youtu.be/AGCmPLWZKd8

Edit: Note: And that was still with better numbers than lmm posted.

This has to just be a side-effect of the revolving-door grace of government subsidies - Currently/lately, short-haul airlines are being subsidized. Even though those subsidies are costly and least effective.

Can you be more specific? What are the specific budgets or regulatory advantages you’re referring to?

Railways in UK are great, if you can afford it and if they're not on strike themselves.

Flying is actually annoying because not many cities are connected, unlike Germany for example.

On top of that, the airports in smaller cities have very few connections outside Britain.

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