Hacker News Reader

Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

West European rail is very full, so rail use is carefully coordinated, since trains of vastly different speeds (e.g. ICE vs a regional train) use the same tracks.

If an ICE is, say, 15 minutes late, they cannot just drive faster to catch up. The schedule went on, and at that point there may be a much slower regional or intercity train on the same trajectory.

This is why ICE delays tend to cascade. It starts with a short delay, the ICE gets stuck behind a slower train, increasing the delay, etc.

The solution is better maintenance of tracks and trains, adding more rail capacity, adding redundancy, etc.

Of course, these are all much more expensive than an ICE speed experiment for PR.

View on HN

This looks technically correct but let’s exaggerate the speed up to drive my point. Let’s assume trains are 2x faster now than before. You can now either reduce the time and pack the schedule or use the extra “x” time for catching up when needed. Where does this logic break?

> the ICE gets stuck behind a slower train, increasing the delay, etc.

Right here. Those slower (older) trains don't magically get any faster just because the train behind it sped up.

> pack the schedule

You actually can't just double it up because faster trains need bigger gaps between them, just like driving on a motorway. If the train in front needs to slow/stop for whatever reason, you don't want the train behind smashing into it at 400km/h because it was tailgating.

Yeah I agree - you need big percentage of trains to get faster for the full effect.

If it is the same as in Switzerland, the solution is in helping people get the health care they need. Most time I got annoying delays when I was living in Switzerland was because of a "personal accident" which 99% of the time meant someone had deliberately jumped in front of a train.

> If it is the same as in Switzerland, the solution is in helping people get the health care they need. [...]

Switzerland SBB/CFF and the German DB can not be compared, not even from far.

The Swiss trains are amongst the best in the world in term on punctuality. Delays barely exceed few minutes most of the time. Every connection is scheduled to be done < 5min. The usage is smooth like butter and It works like a Swiss clock.

At the opposite, German trains in the eastern part are barely on time and give you an almost Soviet experience for the regional one: The trains are old, poorly maintained, like the track itself and the service suffers of it.

The only place in Western Europe I experienced train to be worst than in Germany is currently in Hungary where there were actual soviet trains.

Even the freaking French SNCF with their legendary strikes tend to be more punctual than the DB.

France has a separate high-speed train network, so speed differences between high-speed (TGV) and low-speed (freight, low class passenger) trains don't cause inefficiencies.

Switzerland doesn't have high-speed trains, only low-speed ones. And all timetables are carefully tuned to half- or full-hour station distance intervals that all trains on a track take at the same speed ("Taktfahrplan").

Germany has the worst of all those worlds: No Taktfahrplan (because it probably would be impossible due to the larger and far more complex network), high- and low-speed trains on the same tracks, and only some sections of dedicated high-speed rail that drive up the cost but still have shared stations and sections with low-speed rail so that punctuality goes down when the tiniest thing goes wrong.

> France has a separate high-speed train network, so speed differences between high-speed (TGV) and low-speed (freight, low class passenger

Yes 100% right. Japan has the same where the Shinkansen uses dedicated track. If I do not say a mistake, China does the same too.

The fact it never has been done in a modern country like Germany with a dense high speed train traffic like the ICE is clearly a sign of planning deficit from the authorities.

It's just a difference in aims and circumstances. Japan has multiple train companies operating different networks, so a separate network was the only thing they could build. France accepted the compromise that high-speed TGV stations are far outside of the city areas, like airports, which makes nominal travel times fast, but the first and last miles will always be slow local trains to the city centre. Germany wanted ICE passengers to arrive at the central train station of a city, so using the existing train network at least partially is the only possibility. China has larger distances and no preexisting dense network, so building separate and dedicated is easier. Also, they maybe don't fuss about tearing down a few buildings and disowning a few home-owners who are in the way of their new dedicated high-speed route and station.

"France accepted the compromise that high-speed TGV stations are far outside of the city areas, like airports, which makes nominal travel times fast, but the first and last miles will always be slow local trains to the city centre. "

That is not true, some TGV dedicated stations have been put in remote area (mostly in far right areas), but there are lots of cities that have high speed train stopping at the central station in the center.

> Japan has multiple train companies operating different networks, so a separate network was the only thing they could build

The Shinkansen initial network and separated tracks have been built at an age where JRails was still a single centralized company.

The main reason was to create a network with a focus speed and punctuality. And to be fair, it was the right choice and pretty revolutionary at the time.

> The only place in Western Europe I experienced train to be worst than in Germany is currently in Hungary where there were actual soviet trains.

As someone from the region, since when is Hungary 'Western' Europe? We are happy when acknowledged as 'Central' but this is new to me.

Good point, I meant mainly 'within the EU' here.

The trains in the post-Soviet region may be old, but surprisingly, they are rarely late. I'm only talking about the post-USSR area, can't say much about the Eastern Bloc in general.

It of course happens in other places too, but the Swiss are somewhat standout in how much they have their other operations in order. It's funny in a sad way that international connections into Switzerland actually get limited because the Swiss don't want other operators fucking up their internal schedule constantly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com