But for many software engineer this is not a big surprise: everyone knows that accumulating tech debt and neglecting maintence will eventually bite back sooner or later.
But for many software engineer this is not a big surprise: everyone knows that accumulating tech debt and neglecting maintence will eventually bite back sooner or later.
Not to excuse the German performance, but part of the reason is that the Italian high-speed railway network is significantly simpler than the German one, also in terms of interconnections with neighbouring countries:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italy_TAV.png#/media...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICE_Network.png#/med...
Still last year I found it much better than in Germany, overall. The only thing that PISSES me off is that the stupid Trenitalia does not show me which platform the train is departing/arriving from. It blows my mind that this CRUCIAL information is not shown anywhere and you literally have to be standing in the station to hopefully find it.
The Trenitalia app shows arrival and departure platform and time info per station, as well as for trips you are currently taking.
There is also this gem of a website, no TLS and with 2007 iPhone 1.0 design language, but it works:
http://www.viaggiatreno.it/infomobilitamobile/pages/cercaTre...
In which city?
YMMV
In my experience, you have to take at least one train early if you do not want to come late regularly. Even e.g. the main airport train line, used by tourists, often turns around before the actual airport due to delays.
If you live in the city itself, it's fine, you also have other options. If you live further away, it's barely acceptable to very bad, IMO.
It is reliable-ish, but more "Amtrak Capital Corridor"-reliable than "JR Yamanote Line"-reliable.
One remark only: TGV does not have to use the high speed rails only. It will just have to go slower on the other rails.
I agree that, in cases where being on time is essential (like catching a flight), allowing for a train malfunction so that you can reach your destination with the next one is a good strategy.
Sibling comment says all traffic in Munich is funneled through the same central section; that's also true for several Berlin lines, but I've never heard of it becoming a problem. Maybe one time. Berlin's network[1] is complex enough that you have plenty of alternate routes available if something like that happens.
Note to future urban planners: a ring railway is a great idea as it provides redundancy of any possible route through the city center. (Very large cities might even need two. The Soviets actually built a second ring to avoid West Berlin, but it doesn't run as a continuous service. You can see various regional services running around the very outside of the network map.)
I've also traveled fairly long distances by regional train (yay Deutschlandticket) and by ICE (absolutely worth it if you're not penny-pinching). It's always disrupted; trains are always late. But I always get to my destination, so I don't mind that much. If you're on a nice and relaxed schedule, like traveling the day before, you'll be fine. It seems an acceptable, despite not ideal, way to run a railway network.
I think that unlike plane travel, where you normally get there exactly on time but there's a small chance you might be seriously delayed, with German train travel you're quite often a few hours delayed (for a cross-country trip) but it's never worse than that. You never have to stay the night in a hotel, you never have to pay extra money to get rebooked, and you never have to sue them afterwards. IIRC, if you're estimated to arrive more than 20 minutes late, you're allowed to just hop on any train towards your destination - the DB app will tell you this - and you don't need a new ticket, though it's recommended to get a note from a customer service desk to prove it occurred.
Note that the German network runs a lot of trains on a lot of tracks - unlike, say, the French TGV network, which has dedicated tracks for TGVs. The German approach allows for more services with less reliability and the French approach provides the opposite. AFAIK, there are a lot more ICE routes than TGV routes because the routes can be pieced together from existing local track segments and incrementally upgraded.
Side note: I've been on a regional train that was delayed 10 minutes, then sat on a siding for another hour to let more important traffic such as ICEs run on schedule past it. There is a tradeoff between resource utilization, and slack which allows for quick return to equilibrium. The more timeslots are occupied, the longer it takes before a delayed train can find a normally empty timeslot to fit into. This also applies to computers.
And people have been complaining about train delays since long before I got here.