Come to Slovakia, where 30+ minute delays are the norm. Or to Greece, where railways are still operated by humans.
15 years ago I thought the Germans were the smartest people in the world because they understood the importance of investing in public services and had a central european style of capitalism that focused on fundamentals over financialization. since then they’ve slowly been adopting more neoliberal policies and making really stupid foreign policy decisions. I’ve lost a lot of respect for them as a world leader.
Don’t forget turning off all their nuclear plants to become reliant on brown coal and russian (now american) gas.
Oh no, that actually started way earlier!
The DB was supposed to be privatized in 1994, that failed. So now we have a stock based company (AG), lead like a profit oriented company, but owned 100% by the state.
Since 1994, the entire company was (due to incompentence and wrong incentives) driven on attrition. The best example: if a bridge needs repair, that’s DB’s expense, but if the bridge has to be rebuilt, the state pays. So what would any smart CEO do? Stop maintenance, wait for the bridge to fail and then have it repaired on the state’s bill.
As an American who used DB for the first time, their shitty transit blows the best travel experiences here out of the water. I’d rather use German trains than fly first class in the US. Not even close TBH.
You can’t compare a first world country to a third world country.
i donno, amtrak is pretty great on the east coast. there’s absolutely nothing from the mississippi to the west coast so if you’re going that way youre going to have a bad time.
If Amtrak is the best we can do we should all be embarassed.
what’s wrong with amtrak?
Frequent delays. Poor frequency. Weird routes. Slow average speeds that can barely compete with a bus. Always getting bogged down by track-sharing with freight.
The Northeast corridor is the only section of the entire system that is even remotely decent and is basically subsidizing the crappy lines that they are congressionally mandated to run so it’s not even that cost competitive with other modes.
To be fair, most of this isn’t Amtrak’s fault but just a reflection of the fact that America doesn’t care about passenger rail.
yah the north east corridor is great.
Have you ever been to Europe? The Amtrak is terrible
yah ive been to europe. some things are nicer but amtrak is way more accommodating for people with disabilities.
As a general tip: you usually have to apply for assistance beforehand. Doesn’t mean it isn’t shitty though, and if your train is delayed then and you miss a connection…
yah that is what we ended up having to do for my family. i think the bigger issue was the surrounding buildings and some of the stations not having adequate assistance. they nearly dumped my father into the water in Amsterdam.
i live in DC and commuted every day on the MARC for years and never saw anything so disasterous. the ACA is a force to be reckoned with.
“A nation built on efficiency”. These times are looong over. We had a good run with our Wirtschaftswunder in post-WWII times and that’s about it.
Yes. But travel to other countries and hear their thoughts about Germany and you’ll discover this image is very much alive still. It’s important to spread the word outside of Germany, too.
Had some Germans visiting Norway recently. They said Germany is becoming way too individualistic. It’s a race to the bottom now. Liberalism has taken it’s hold, so efficiency will fade away.
Perhaps the Germans could start investing in coal powered trains?
