Hacker News Reader

I think you can select any day, week, or month and the rail system in Germany will always be in chaos.

That was not generally true before the system upgrades started. It's been true for a while though.

I didn't mean short-term bad timing, I mean it's bad that we're getting hit by increasing droughts in the same decade the train system hit its breaking point and needed fixing.

It's been true for at least 16 years though, admittedly - it's gotten even worse since Corona

Neglect of the rail systems has been true for over 16 years, but there was distinctly less chaos before 2020, because the systems were just left in operation as they rotted.

Post pandemic, it was decided that they had to fix it, at the same time that there's been a sustained surge in ridership. The operations to fix the rail network combined with decay, combined with higher ridership than ever before is what causes the chaos.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com