Start looking at public infrastructure works in Germany and you’ll a series of massive cost overruns and hugely delayed delivery times. Airport in Berlin is a classic.
I live in Switzerland and although I am not involved in trains, what Swiss do aint magic, just simple following the rules, and rules they do. Maybe even less efficient than Germans at the end.
I really dont see any difference with Germany on the ground, yet when I look at Germany's politicians and their actions, at least the public part leaves a lot to be desired. Rather then the question becomes how come this country is actually economically so successful? Certainly not due to perfect environment for private businessess.
it's almost as if it isn't true that it's an efficiency powerhouse
The profit in infrastructure is economic growth and optimizations of people's mobility. This can only be done by a state. A state can still mess it up but it is the only entity that can do it.
Good luck getting a "Taktfahrplan" working if you have to rely on private rail companies optimizing for every last dollar and having the locomotives catch fire blocking lines for hours. When the Fung Wah Bus breaks down for the 10th time on the way to NY it doesn't block all traffic but with rail you don't have the luxury to drive around it.
The extensive damage in the Swiss Gotthard Base Tunnel was caused by a bad wheel from a foreign rail company that cut costs to a point of running rail cars with wheels that have way too many km on them.
Does the example of Japan prove the conventional wisdom wrong?
I think this is just a cliché. There are a lot of examples in the public, the semi-public and the private sector were Germany is or became very inefficient or missed opportunities (long-distance trains, mobile phone prices and coverage, Berlin public administration, Berlin airport, Stuttgart train station, but also Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Bayer, BASF, not to speak of Quelle and Holzmann in the past).
However, one should not forget the special circumstances due to German reunification in the last 30+ years. In terms of GDP and population proportion it would be equivalent if the USA opened its border to Mexico today and gives all Mexicans US citizenship immediately. Than Mexico joins the USA 11 month later. After 10 years the USA gives up the US-Dollar for a Pan-American currency. For the 3 decades after the Mexico-USA unification the old USA transfers aprox. 2,000,000,000,000 to old Mexico. -- Perhaps this thought experiment makes it clear that it would have been more than a miracle if the high degree of efficiency that was associated with the old West-Germany could have been seamlessly continued into a reunified Germany. But allow the Germans another 34 years ...
Regarding long distance travelling (people as well as freight), Germany is also in a quite unique situation. It is in the center of major European long distance routes from every direction. In comparision even the traffic network topography of Austria and Switzerland is a lot simpler. In Austria it is North-South over the Brenner to Italy and NW-SE from Central Europe to South-East Europe. Switzerland is primarily NE-SW (Basel-Geneva) and a single major North-South train route (Zürich/Luzern-Lugano).
Just compare this map of the Swiss railway system (ignore the red lines, which are more or less only used for local transport):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personenverkehr_in_der_Schweiz...
with that of Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Germany#/med...
This is extremely misleading. Eastern Germany had a better educational system than the west and higher female labor participation. A better example might be like if the USA opened it's boarder to Cuba, and was flooded by doctors and engineers.
My only point was to find an analogy that illustrates the approximate order of magnitude.
1) There are actually many more corridors, of which Basel-Geneva is not really an important one. St Gallen - Zurich - Bern - Geneva and Basel-Lugano are the main ones, but there are two routes between Bern and Geneva, there are trains connecting Zurich to the South East and trains connecting Bern to Visp and Sion. On top of that you have non-SBB companies like ZB.
2) The topography of the country is complex with lakes and mountains everywhere.
3) The scale is off: Germany is massive and you’re showing a map that includes the Berlin S-bahn, while only showing major connections for Switzerland, even though that mapped is 4 times more zoomed in.
Ad 2) True.
Ad 3) Perhaps a better map to support my point is this one about the core Trans-European freight train network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-European_Transport_Netwo... Of course this map is limited, as it does not cover passenger transport and does not show transport volume. However, the fundamental topological problem of the network in Germany should be quite apparent as there are a lot of options were traffic is changing directions and a congestion in a specific place may easily spread to other hubs. -- It is perhaps no coincidence that Europe's two largest marshalling yards are in Germany: Maschen Rangierbahnhof[1] near Hamburg and Mannheim Rangierbahnhof[2].
Ie their skilled labor force is shrinking and these are the knock on effects of having too small of families.