Hacker News Reader

Comment by remolueoend | Hacker News Reader

> Another figure illustrates why the practice is necessary from a Swiss perspective: in 2023, 92.5 percent of all trains in Switzerland reached their destination on time, compared to only 64 percent for long-distance trains in Germany.

To add a bit more detail: SBB (Swiss federal railways) consider a train on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay [1]. DB (Deutsche Bahn) puts the threshold at 15 minutes ("Reisendenpünktlichkeit") [2].

[1] https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society...

[2] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen...

View on HN

To put this a bit into perspective: long-distance trains in Germany typically travel for at least half a day. "Long-distance" trains in Switzerland can be compared to regional lines in Germany (the country simply isn't that large, and the majority of rail travel in Switzerland happens between Zurich/Olten/Berne/Basel, which are all within 100 km of each other). The likelihood of anything going wrong during a 1:30h train journey from Zurich to Basel is simply much lower than during a 10 hour train journey from Kiel to Freiburg. 3 minutes delay on a 1:30h train journey is a delay of 3.3%, 15 mins delay on a 10 hour train journey is a delay of 2.5%.

The reason regional trains are also delayed is that regional lines, local lines, long distance lines and freight trains are typically using the same tracks in Germany, and delayed long distance trains always get higher priority. A typical situation is that your regional train is perfectly on time, but suddenly stops, and waits for 5-10 minutes for a delayed long-distance train to overtake it. Switzerland has a similar mixed system, but as noted above, does not really have long-distance rail lines, apart from the trains that enter from Italy, Austria, France and Germany, which is the main reason why these trains are not allowed to enter if delayed. This is in contrast to the system in France, where TGV lines typically have dedicated high-speed tracks, where all trains on it travel more or less at the same speed.

Shouldn't you then add redundancy to the system by having time buffers at large stops every 2-3 hours? Or even let replacement trains start at intermediate stops as soon as the delay of the regular train is greater than X to avoid propagation of the delay into to rest of the network? Absolutely, but most stations and rail lines in Germany are either at their operational limit, or above. Having a train wait for 15 minutes in a large station just in case it is delayed would block that track for 15 minutes in the majority of cases, when the train is punctual. Also, DB simply has not enough rolling material to start replacement trains, and the rail infrastructure to even park such trains has largely been dismantled in the years after the privatization (they are doing it sometimes, but not very often).

DB is in major crisis with the workforce with tens of thousands of boomers retiring soon. They don’t have enough people for any redundancy.

is this specific to DB only? I feel like Germany needs a lot of workforce at German quality but no way they can fill that with any type of foreign immigration. They lowered a lot of immigration requirements to entry because of this. But still it will be not enough. It's a cultural thing and low wages in Germany can't fix it.

And now because of German needs eastern and south-easthern EU countries are in even worse position because Germany has hoovered up a decent chunk of skilled younger workforce.

We have started to import unskilled/low skilled laborers from SE Asia en masse to keep the country barely running. But the quality is going downhill yet prices of goods and real estate are soaring.

>and south-easthern EU countries are in even worse position

The economy of Easter Europe has been growing steadily in the last years and skilled immigration tom Germany ahs slowed since the salary/CoL ratio has reduced lately.

The language is a big problem. They can get quality immigrants, but convincing those quality immigrants to learn German is a big task. A lot of people would rather go to US with all it's uncertainty than stay in Germany due to these issues.

The language isn't the biggest problem. Once you learn the language your problems don't stop. The big problem is most companies in Germany still prefer to exclusively hire locals who went through the German education system and have degrees from established local educational institutions, instead of recognizing foreigners' digress from abroad at similar levels to that of locals.

It's a white collar form of discrimination. Unless you come from a country as 'white' and wealthy as Germany, your degrees and experience is seen as much less valuable despite your language knowledge and your CV will be rejected even if it's technically a fit. Then comes the discrimination you'll face when looking for a place to rent but that's in other countries as well like the Netherlands.

Fair enough..

Americans don’t place much trust in foreign degrees.

We do value actual experience (as opposed to certification).

I once interviewed a nanny who had been a practicing lawyer in Central America.

I chose to hire someone with no education, but an extra year of nannying.

Well, we just got one million of Ukrainian refugees, half of which is not going to return home according to dome polls, but you are right, the demographics cannot be fixed by immigration alone. I myself currently work on a corporate healthcare project with the goal to reduce sick leaves and reduce health-related early retirements. The parental benefits in Germany are quite generous, but it all breaks into the growing cost of living wall. Everyone understands what’s going on and the urgency, but real solutions are yet to be found.

> but real solutions are yet to be found

"Real solutions" exist, but voters won't want to hear them, so we kick the can down the road until the system collapses by itself naturally.

They are non-solutions if they cannot pass voter approval. But what are you talking about exactly?

>They are non-solutions if they cannot pass voter approval.

Then why don't voters just vote themselves higher salaries and better pension plans and higher retirement ages? D'uh! Who cares about economics when you have votes? Worked well for Greece.

>But what are you talking about exactly?

Reducing public welfare according to realistic economic capacity and sustainability of the national budget, and encourage citizens to rely more on private systems and personal responsibility. See Switzerland.

You're aware that the Swiss railway is nationalized? Since 1901...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Railways

What does that have to do with the welfare state I was talking about?

So, non-solutions, as I said. You refer to a state that is 10 times smaller, has the same demographic problems and over 40% of population with immigration background as a model for Germany, why? Do you seriously believe it can scale to German size? What has it to do with the budget?

I proposed the Swiss system as the solution and welfare reductions according to the budget and you're calling it non-solutions. Why are you being dismissive in Bad faith without any arguments?

The German welfare state will slowly collapse by itself on the long term anyway at this rate since the expenses are growing faster than the income and the only way to save it is to reduce it. Why isn't that a solution? Are you saying math is wrong and can be altered by votes?

> Why isn't that a solution? Are you saying aritmetic is wrong?

I’m saying that you just proposed random idea that has nothing to do with solving the workforce crisis. Reducing welfare state will not increase birth rate, if anything it will decrease it. Lower taxes will not lead to bigger families, with scarce housing the additional income will be simply redistributed to landlords thus increasing inequality. You propose to treat symptoms, but this treatment will only accelerate death.

1) The Swiss way is not random WTF are you on about. It's based on people receiving welfare based on individual contributions, not based on social need, out of bottomless money pit which is anything but bottomless. You can't grow your economy if you use a third of the national budget on welfare instead of stuff like R&D to boost the economy.

2) There's no workforce crisis, it's just a shit pay and too high CoL crisis. Skilled workforce will always come if you pay for it enough to make it worth their effort. See Switzerland and the USA. Germany doesn't want to. They want workers to work for peanuts, pay high taxes and to tolerate crazy housing. Skilled people with options aren't into that.

3) Why are you so focused on birthrates? Uneducated people having more kids randomly as economic cannon fodder will not boost the economy since they might cost more in welfare than they produces as adults. You need to get skilled people any way you can not just throwing random bodies at the problem hoping that fixes the economy.

4) If you insist on being focused on birthrates, then see how countries with the lowest or no welfare have the higher birthrates, and countries with the best welfare have the fewest. Food for thought.

> The Swiss way is not random WTF are you on about.

You failed to explain how it will help DB to hire more people. Yes, this is random until you connect the dots.

> Skilled workforce will always come if you pay for it enough to make it worth their effort.

To Germany? No, they will not. I would not, if the money were my primary incentive (yes, I’m THE skilled workforce you are talking about). You are talking about half of current German GDP to make it an incentive. And the whole country must start speaking English as a primary language. And of course there’s global demographic problem: you see, population of our planet will peak soon enough, poor countries will get richer and there will be less and less incentive for educated people to move. For small countries like Switzerland it may be enough for a while. For most of the Europe merit-based systems won’t work - we will have to offer support and education to refugees and unskilled economic migrants. Neocolonial model with immigration-supported economy is simply not sustainable.

> Why are you so focused on birthrates? See above.

> Uneducated people having more kids

Who said “uneducated”? In Germany education rates are very high. The problem is not education itself, but deferred or abandoned family plans because of simpler life opportunities elsewhere.

> Food for thought.

I don’t think you are in position to tell this to anyone regarding this topic. You clearly have not educated yourself enough on this matter.

You are spreading misinfo about what happened in Greece.

>low wages in Germany

Don't forget the absurdly high social expenditures and taxes. You only keep like 40% of your money and it's on track to get even worse.

Yes with no real retirement in the future :) All social benefits and retirements will collapse and %100 not sustainable not only for Germany but for so many nations. Many reason exist already and it just takes longer.

German welfare state is worth paying it, it just needs to become more efficient. I don’t miss lower taxes I enjoyed in other countries, because I see the difference. And, anyway, high taxes hit upper middle class the most, for majority of population it’s not the biggest concern — rent is.

And how many passengers are on those 10h+ train rides that you compare to?

Because your entire point is that most passengers in Switzerland travels on those short distances. How are the riders distributed in Germany?

Esspecially pro enviroment prefer such rides (but air lines are much cheaper, I only took a train from Munich to Hamburg)

I think people in general choose the most efficient mode of transport.

Efficient for what metric? Carbon emissions? Time? Money?

Time/Money.

To put this into a bit of perspective, DB once was much better:

   DB reported some 94.1 percent of services arrived within five minutes of their scheduled time in 2017.[0]

[0](https://www.france24.com/en/20180322-record-2017-deutsche-ba...)

Slightly longer stops solves the problem. :-/

Increasing timetable ride time between stations too (beyond actual needed time). The Dutch railways do that a lot.

As someone who used to travel regularly between Zurich and Frankfurt (Zurich - Hamburg line ICE) I can 100% tell you that distance is *NOT* the root cause of DB's reliability problems. Infrastructure decline is. From lack of electrification, badly maintained rolling stock, insufficient tracks you find everything. Swiss railways deal with problems like lack of capacity and geography. Deutsche Bahn deals with a lack of maintenance and investment.

Maybe you are not aware, but swiss trains dont go back to sleep after they arrive at a destination. They stop for 3-5 minutes, and then continue to their next destination. All day long, from morning till evening. Geneve to St. Gallen with like a dozen stops is pretty long way. Especially when you drive it 6 times a day.

Also generally the length of the tracks dont magically change. It is possible to create a timetable: which train should be where when, and then stick to it.

Note that before the DB, SBB were anoyed with some models of french or italien trains, which broke down regularly, putting too much pressure on the integrated timetable.

Fyi, it's actually easier for trains to be on time the longer the journey is - that's because sane travel times aren't calculated at max speeds. So if there is any delay, you can go at a higher speed than what was used in the calculation to catch up. On shorter journeys there are simply fewer opportunities to catch up.

Now, I wouldn't be exactly shocked if DB using too high speed assumptions in their stated travel times was part of their problem with delays.

And its doubtful any statistics from the German side can be trusted. In more than one occasion, I've personally experienced delayed and cancelled trains that were shown as running on time in every information system. DB either doesn't know where their trains are, or is continuously fudging the numbers.

I don't really understand the downvote, as cancelled trains do indeed not count towards the delay.

So often trains are cut short and do not reach their final destination, which is arguably even more inconvenient for the customers.

They are intentionally preventing transparency. The operational side of DB knows where the trains are, and the infrastructure to communicate it transparently to consumer side is intentionally hampered. And so information I'd either delayed or not available.

Having read through the links you provided: You are comparing two different things. DB’s Reisendenpünktlichkeit takes in delays caused by missed connections etc. SBB’s 3 minute delay are just the individual train delays. For that DB has a similar measure which defines punctual as below 6 minutes of delay. So the difference is big (3 vs 6 minutes) but not that big (3 vs 15 minutes).

You are of course right, "Reisendenpünktlichkeit Fernverkehr" hasn't even been published by DB before January 2024 - my bad.

15 min already? Damn, I remember, when the threshold was at 5m59s and that was already kind of outrageous.

Isn't moving the goalposts convenient?

Not really moved the goalposts according to a comment posted 20+ minutes before yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41190333

Reply on news.ycombinator.com