for the people who wouldn't have inadvertently clicked on the website: it's not real money, it's a campaign to nudge the German provider to care about their infamous delays
In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Also, it went through a pseudo-privatisation back then, which hasn't helped (just private enough to focus on quarterly profits by letting bridges decay so that they have to be rebuilt or repaired in a few years, just public enough that they have to serve a lot of non-lucrative areas by law).
I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt. It's just that politicians dealt them a really bad hand. And if Germany were to properly invest in infrastructure from now on, there's so much stuff that has to be repaired that reliability would go down even more in the next decade or so (seriously, this is not something you could fix in a year or two, even with hundreds of billions).
It’s almost as if people are tired of having betting shoved down their throats.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
Because DB does not decide its own budget. And we're literally living in times where their employees are getting attacked and verbally abused by the passengers for the state of the train system
Except when they quickly build cartels. See internet in Germany.
Yes, we can use more devices now. Prices have stayed more or less the same (or have risen, corrected by inflation. Service quality has collapsed, though.
Telekom is a profitable enterprise. Yet, telecom infrastructure in Germany is on a remarkably bad level and relatively expensive. Cell coverage is also still bad, especially when travelling via rail or car.
With the exception if the Japanese Rail, all the other examples are different in one crucial detail: they are not natural monopolies.
(There is plenty of examples for good or bad private or state owned railways. It's just not black and white)
For Germany though, the rail „privatization“ has been an absolute failure no matter how you try to spin it, unfortunately. But hey, at least we have nice rolling stock!
OMG. Employers to never work for:
- the Bund - the Oeffentlichen - Deutsche Bahn - Unions, especially ver.di - established / legacy parties
I think most people don't blame the normal employees. The blame is on the management layers, the "Wasserkopf", that gives themselves boni, even if things are done poorly and are going badly. A disconnect from the reality on the tracks.
I don't see improvements. I rather see worse and worse reliability, even though Deutsche Bahn asks for more and more money from the government. That money is disappearing somewhere, at least partially, instead of arriving in projects for improving the situation. In many places, if not most, there isn't even a single turnout track, so that any construction work halts the whole line. Disastrous. You cannot ask people to buy train tickets for 100 to 200 EUR, and then be hours late. I mean, you can, but then you are delusional. They are not surviving because of their great product or service, they are only surviving, because people don't have good alternatives. Basically, it is extortion. In other countries I pay 1/10 of the ticket price and I arrive on friggin' time, on a much longer ride.
Are you new to the Internet? This has been a thing since (at least) Slashdot. :)
In defence of the 80%, there is no indication in any section other than the About page that it is not real money (with the possible exception of the suspiciously high sums of money), and most commercial services have fairly useless About pages. The HN headline presents it as if it's real.
A far cry from GP's implication that "inadvertently click[ing] on the website" is sufficient to see this.
A lot of delays are due to rail corridors being at capacity, but overboarding bureaucracy makes any improvement there a generational project.
Hamburg - Hanover has been discussed for decades with strong opposition from NIMBY groups with no solution in sight.
But even if there is no opposition things take ages. E.g. for restoring the 2nd track and electrification between Cottbus and Görlitz the plan is now to finish the project by 2041.
This is absolutely insane for 100km of track that were removed as WW2 reparations.
And looking at previous projects it's unlikely to finish in time.
The new S-Bahn track in Berlin between the main station and Gesundbrunnen was supposed to open in 2017. It got delayed over and over and is now finally scheduled to open by the end of this month - just a delay of 9 years.
And that's with an interim station because the real station at Hauptbahnhof wasn't finished in time - and no intermediate stop, that's now also in the planning phase and will mean the line will have to be interrupted again in the near future
Sure, they can improve, but it seems possible. The French SNCF has improved a lot in the last decade, for instance.
Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket. Consider it an adventure. The app can suggest alternative routes in real-time, and you can also ask at the info desk at any station that has one.
There's definitely a comedy docudrama in there somewhere.
At this point here in the south of Germany not having DB would be an improvement.
Now it exists and you might even try to take it just to be delayed and disappointed. You'll lose your money and they behave in their arrogant manner with impunity.
Their customer "service" will definitely tell you how it's your own fault for having had the nerve to actually try to take their train. You might have even carried some dirt to the train for Christs sake!
So yeah. Not having it would already be an improvement. You'd just shrug and move on and take an alternative transport. Even horse and carriage would be better.
> Even horse and carriage would be better.
How does the existence of the DB prevent you from travelling with your horse and carriage? Your attitude doesn't seem very constructive, to be honest.
EU does not have a train monopoly. There are other train companies in Germany (FlixTrain, OBB, BRB...). And operators from other countries can also operate there, even French SNCF!
DB is blocking slots on rail, that could be used by other operators. And they are not going to change because it is Germany.
I recently experienced this with CD from Karlovy Vary to Berlin. It was snowing that day and inside of the Czech Republic I was enjoying the scenic view of the Egerland without any delays.
But as soon as we pulled into Germany, the train came to a stop - problems with the rail security infrastructure, nothing the train operator has any influence on.
We eventually arrived in Berlin with +1h delay.
Rails, buildings and train stations are in separate company (DB InfraGO), owned by DB.
But DB has no monopoly on trains in Germany, any company can run trains there.
Fine if some trains go through it (e.g. a TGV between Paris and Berlin).
I'd really like to see that happen for the S-trains, as well--DB loves nothing more than continuing to project an on-time arrival on the station board, as the time of departure comes and goes and other trains arrive and depart.
> All the trains, delays, and data on this app are real.But the money isn't – because for that I'd need to move to Malta. Or Cyprus. Or Schleswig-Holstein.
But I remember being interviewed for a cybersecurity job at Siemens's Trains division and the german guys there started grilling me on some obscure cybersecurity standards used by the rail industry, even though that was never in my pentest resume and it's something that can be learned on the job.
Germans really hate hiring people who don't 100% fit a job description no matter how impossible it is. No wonder their economy is stagnant, when it's based on HR box ticking instead of aptitudes.
Good employees are required for the private sector that has competition, not for pseudo-state controlled pseudo-monopolies.