> As a European used to efficient train travel
As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
The trains ran on thyme.
In the South you have thoughts and prayers. A trip Bari<>Milano (900km) is mostly around 8-9 hours, going further south elongates the journey incredibly.
I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned.
So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.