I find those comparisons always a bit odd, because what you are measuring against is an arbitrary schedule. Any train service can reach near 100% punctuality by adding sufficient slack in the schedule so that most trains are able to reach their destination even before the scheduled time of arrival.
You say that like it’s a bad thing, but being honest about the schedule sounds like an absolute plus - for some reason, organizations within some countries have schedules they cannot meet, and I doubt they aren’t well aware already. It might be because realistic schedules make them look bad, so they just fudge the numbers to make themselves look better?
Except they don’t do that. And just expanding the schedule does not work when you need to juggle passenger trains as well as freight trains. Planning for more time between the trains means less throughput and therefore less money. But as a dispatcher, @ZonenRanslite@feddit.org is surely more qualified to argue than any of us.
Germany has ruined the railways through austerity. Thanks, Ministry of Transport.
I thought the blame was on DB, a private company, for taking the profits without any investment on the infrastructure (I just realize, the infra is state/ public?).
A train service with a lot of slack isn’t a successful one though, as it would make them not that competitive in comparison to other means of transportation, by A- the journey looking longer than otherwise and B- the extra slack means that trains are circulating less, and are less profitable
Can we please stop excluding the UK from these charts? Its still geographically European and acting like it isn’t just feeds the brexiters… also because it’d be funny to have a country with -37 as its punctuality value on here.
Where’s Japan?
Edit: yeah, I’m dumb. Wasn’t paying attention.
Last time I was in geography class, it was located in Asia, not Europe. Things have changed in the world since then, but I do not think this has. Hope that helps.
Anyone who might be surprised that Germany is so low here, Germans are always surprised people think it would be very high.
There is a simple reason, too: Auto-Lobby. Our car manufacturers are very powerful in politics and public infrastructure is heavily underfunded.
Funnily enough, highways and other roads are also crumbling, so good luck to the car makers when there is less and less road to drive those precious machines on.
America is much the same in that regard. We have probably the most laughably terrible train network, both in terms of freight and passenger, for any western country, especially relative to any meaningful metric like GDP. It’s down to a noxious mix of car lobby, racism, and stupid policy choices (single family housing exclusive zoning, parking minimums, etc) all applied consistently over 70 years. In spite of all that, and in spite of increasingly enormous re-investment packages, our roads never really seem to get much better. I hope it’s the same in Germany, but I’ve noticed that having better mobility solutions than cars and planes only is quickly becoming a pretty mainstream position in the US.
I mean you are still building massive highways. Most european countries aren’t building highways anymore.
Not really. It’s mostly maintenance and only a few new projects due to shifting demand.
I would say the root cause of the DB issues is rather the failed attempt to privatise it, which caused years decades of infrastructure underinvestment to cook the books to make it look more attractive to private investors.
But of course the strong car lobby also played a role in that.
But they are organised as and run like a private company and driven purely by short term profits and will pay big time bonuses to their executives (usually ex polititians) every year.
Yes, hence me saying “failed”. They cooked the books because they wanted to put it up for sale on the stock market, but in the end that never happend for a lot of different reasons.
This is the main reason. While the car lobby is no doubt dangerously powerful they are also heavily dependant on the cargo department of DB. A massive amount of industrial commodities is moved by the railway network and not the ubiquitous trucks. If they worked to defund the railway infrastructure they would eventually hurt their own supply lines.
Additionally, the number presented is most likely too high, since it’s more important to tune the numbers than to provide good service.
Example: a late train can be taken out of service and replaced, or even not. Voila! Not late anymore.
I wish this wasn’t the reality.
I spent nearly a quarter century working for a German company.
The Germans think about the Swiss the same way we think about the Germans.
Ah yes, the 12 countries of Europe.
Yeah Is Slovenia the worst in europe or 12th best? Most probably it’s just random which countries are in the graph.
