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Comment by emaro | Hacker News Reader

Surprised how positive you're writivg about the German public transport. The Deutsche Bahn doesn't have a good reputation in central Europe.

I guess my frame of reference isn't average, given I live in Switzerland.

Edit: the 49-euro ticket is great though!

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Of course your frame of reference is biased because you have the best railway system out of ~30 European countries.

Germany’s system gets a lot of hate but it still in the top ~8 or so.

I agree. Let's grant that SBB is more organized than DB. But given that Germany is 8 times as big as Switzerland and with 33,000 km has a significantly larger train network than Switzerland's 5,300 km, it's no surprise that trains accumulate more delays in Germany.

As a UK citizen living in Berlin, I assure you that for all the cancellations and repair works, there's many places which look up to the German system.

(I've also been to the USA, and (IMO) Amtrak makes the UK look good).

The UK is so expensive though. I thought I was looking at airplane fares.

I recently needed two tickets from NYC to LA, and was astonished to find air tickets for $80 and rail tickets for $2200. It's so unbelievably expensive (not counting that the flight was a few hours and the train was 56 hours).

Very disappointing! How is it so expensive?!

Competition, I suppose. Still, that seems extreme. A few years (might have been eight) back, I traveled Amtrak's Zephyr from Chicago to California. The roomette for two (coach would have been cheaper) was some $450, about the same as 2nd class air fare for one then. But yes, the train isn't in a particular hurry, expected travel time is some 50h, but 1.5h in, it was already 20m late for no apparent reason. Most passengers were tourist, but I also talked to a fellow who was going to California to pick up a used car for his daughter.

I like the idea of long distance train traveling, as one can get off and back on later (check the fine print of your ticket though). Apparently, that's not customary however and earned me an interview by a TSA agent (a very polite fellow, odd as it may sound) who approached me (with a local Sheriff in tow) at a scheduled stop.

Fair. I've had one flight to the UK that cost less than the train ticket from the UK airport to my actual destination. Air tickets got a lot more expensive after the pandemic, but it's still close.

(OTOH, I've also had one case where it was cheaper to take the ferry and trains back from the UK to Berlin than fly, presumably because of massive demand as that was the day Stansted airport was closed by 1cm of snow and I had an 8 hour queue for a replacement flight that was itself also cancelled).

I visited the UK, which is my home, and the UK train system was amazing. Got multiple tight connections with zero delays. Far better than I’ve experienced living in Germany

Even when I lived in the UK, I never had that experience.

End of term, Aberystwyth to Birmingham trains were regularly terminated on route at Wolverhampton.

Loose connections generally worked.

Interesting, i am in the opposite situation. Using the deutsche bahn for long distances is often horrible so I never thought I would miss it but omg I really didn't have a good experience with Uk trains. The ticketing is complicated and the trains were often so unbelievably dirty and run down. Never had this experience in an ICE. Okay there are sometimes issues like the toilet boing out of order or the restaurant closed but the train is usually clean and fairly nice. And while the delay wasn't massive I still had delays. It's also sooo slow, there's no high-speed train. Last time I took the train from southampton to edinburgh and it really took forever and I was soo slow.

Even Edinburgh-London is slow! It's a similar distance than munich-berlin, a train I often take. In germany these are sleek, clean trains that take just over 3 hours, with only one or two stops with the sprinter. The train in the UK takes around 5 hours, significantly longer. I can do 3 hours on a friday evening work and arrive not too late to then meet friends for drinks, you can't do that with 5 hours.

And not only ICE, it's the same experience with regional trains. I used to live in Baden-Württemberg and took a lot of regional trains. I didn't think I would miss it with the delays from the new central station that they've been building for what feels like forever but now I do.

There are many things that the UK does better than Germany but trains they manage to do even worse (or maybe its not that bad?)

> There are many things that the UK does better than Germany but trains they manage to do even worse

The trains are better in the UK than in Germany

really not my experience. I have never seen such dirty trains in other european countries.

Would have been bearable if they would be at least fast, but they are not

> Edit: the 49-euro ticket is great though!

As a Swiss person you want appreciate German tax rates that subsidize that 49-euro tickets. The money has always got to come from somewhere.

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