[looki]

Regarding the trains,

>They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe.

He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying.

I also thought the ICE and non-ICE dichotomy was funny. I would split them into long-distance (IC, ICE, EC) and regional (RE, RB, S-Bahn).

[1]: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... (Db-Fernverkehr tab)

[fhars]

Speaking about the punctuality of German trains, there will be a talk at 36C3 from someone who collected all the actual departure and arrival times of all long distance trains in Germany for this year: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/events...

The talk will be streamed. It is in German, but there will be a simultaneous translation into English and probably some other language.

[ajdlinux]

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time

The author is an Australian, and is therefore almost certainly most impressed by the fact that long-distance trains exist in any meaningful way at all.

Our long distance trains certainly don't have a reputation for punctuality.

[joshschreuder]

Our short distance ones definitely don't either (in Melbourne, at least)

[RileyJames]

We have low standards.

The Victorian “high speed rail project” cost $750M to increase our regional (long distance enough) trains to a whopping 165 km/h.

Here’s the kicker, when it gets hot, they have to slow down. And when I say hot, I mean, 36C (96F). And by slow down I mean 90km/h.

Welcome to Australia, that’s half a month per year. And it’s getting hotter. [bom](http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=086071&p...)

They can be delayed by such long periods they’re replaced by buses. When you arrive is anyone’s guess.

[bitL]

You have the same problem as Russia. Only a tiny part of the country/continent is populated, the population is spread along coasts, and even that not continuously. Building advanced trains is not economical, they won't service sufficient population per km traveled.

[tomarr]

Designing high speed rail for large thermal ranges is non-trivial as the forces can be very large.

Solutions can be very expensive (e.g. slab track), and therefore it may not be appropriate to build this out for 2 weeks of the year.

[chrisco255]

You linked climate data that included 1981-2010. When you actually search all of the historic data in the drop down, you'll find that there's no significant trend in # of days >35C since 1861. 1981-2010 did show 10.8 for that figure, but the periods 1871-1900, 1881-1910, 1891-1920, and 1901-1930 all showed around the same figure, at 10.8, 11.2, 11.1, and 10.2 respectively.

It looks more like a cyclical trend in Melbourne heat.

[ceejayoz]

Here in the US, Amtrak considers within 30 minutes to be "on time"... and struggles a lot even with that.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-amtrak-cant-run-trains-on-t...

> The Coast Starlight, which runs between Seattle and Los Angeles, had an on-time performance of 4 percent in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. For the California Zephyr, connecting Chicago and San Francisco, the figure was 7 percent. In the current fiscal year, the California Zephyr has not once arrived on time.

[glofish]

ok but the California Zephyr covers 4000 km - that's like going from Madrid to Moscow - I doubt any train or set of trains over that distance ever arrives on time.

[cosmodisk]

Well...The local operators,here in London,solved the stats issue this way: if a train is late, it skips many stations and still arrive to the end station on time. Guess what,all the stats are produced on first- last ststion basis...

[ben_w]

Same idea but slightly different trick was being used when I was at university. Aberystwyth-Birmingham New Street was regularly terminated at Wolverhampton, so that it has gone far enough to count as “not cancelled” and because it didn’t get to BNS late it also “wasn’t late”.

[johnchristopher]

Eh. Same thing in Belgium. Only time of arrival in the last station is taken into account to classify a journey as being late or on time.

[burntoutfire]

What happens to people who want to onboard on the skipped stations?

[netsharc]

And he praises the food in the ICE trains... It shows he's Australian and earned a lot at BMW, the food on ICE trains are severely overpriced.

[rurban]

Could be that he used a czech ICE train operating the Prague-Berlin line over Dresden. This is mostly on time and serves good czech food. I wouldn't recommend eating on German trains as foreigner. Germans have similar food standards as British, the lowest end of the food chain. EDIT: Bavaria is different though. They actually have a different food tradition, more towards the more civilised countries Austria, Czech, Italy.

[fit2rule]

As an Australian who also moved to Germany and Austria, I can say that the trains are very impressive in this part of the world - until you go to Berlin.

Berlin trains will drive you absolutely mad. I was fine with German trains - impressed, even - until I tried to get around Berlin for a few weeks by way of the local train systems. The only thing I can compare it to, is British trains, which are absolutely terrible .. Berlin is like that.

[distances]

> Berlin trains will drive you absolutely mad.

Can you expand a bit, punctuality or what? In Berlin trains are sometimes a bit clunky, sometimes a bit late, but I absolutely love the Berlin public transport system.

[Accacin]

Yeah British trains can be terrible, depends on the area. Saying that I've never noticed they were much worse than any other country I've been too, except maybe Japan.

[croisillon]

that reminds of an amusing time i went to buy a train ticket at dresden main railway station, back in 2003:

- i'd like a ticket for the next train to prag

- ok, 17:25 or 19:25?

- but it's 17:30 already?

- so what? the train is still on station

[lioeters]

That reminds me of an amusing time I spent overnight at the back of the Munich train station, in the cold Autumn wind, with German homeless people (several spoke English) drinking beer.

The reason? Had to transfer from one train to another in Munich - it was around 7pm, I believe - and had assumed from cultural stereotype that German trains would be precisely on time. First one was 10~15min late, missed my connection, and the next one to my destination was the following morning.

The person at the counter suggested sleeping in the waiting room, which was full of people on the chairs and on the floor. Lesson learned..

Edit: The lesson is, as another commenter stated below, increase the time between transfers from the default in Deutsche Bahn's online reservation system.

[bitL]

Heuristics for train delays: Does the train pass Frankfurt? Add 15-30 minutes. Otherwise expect your train within 5 minutes of its scheduled arrival/departure.

[nmnim]

I lived in Frankfurt for a year and now I live in England. I was so frustrated at DB and RMV when my trains were a bit late (3-5 mins for RMV, 15-20 for long DB) once in a while. Now I take a regular train from my town to a city and I've literally only caught it on time TWICE in two years. Usually 20-30 minutes late or suddenly cancelled. Trains here are a whole different level of bad.

[enqk]

Yes unfortunately we made that experience many times.

When you buy tickets from bahn.de, increase the default connection time, theirs is way too low and results in missed connections frequently.

[learnstats2]

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time.

By standards I am familiar with, that's good. Last time I checked, my local train station had trains arriving within 10 minutes only 50% of the time.

[mtmail]

"In Germany, there are two kinds of "on time". So far [2017], 94.2% of trains have reached their final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time, and 98.9% within 16 minutes."

The article also goes into detail how every country measures punctuality differently.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42024020

(Yes, Germans love to complain about the train company)

[lucb1e]

75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane... I dunno, that's not really a chance you want to take, so you end up planning for 1-2 hours of delay every single time, depending on how bad it is if you're late due to no fault of your own (a departing plane won't care but a customer might understand).

[Rebelgecko]

I was in Switzerland recently and they put German trains to shame. I dont think we were ever more than a minute behind schedule. As soon as we crossed into Konstanz the scheduling went to shit

[john61]

In Austria this number is 86,6% (long distance, max 5 min late) Austrians also travel the most by train in the EU. (a coinicidence?)

[chillfox]

I don't know about trains, but where I live in Australia buses can be up to one hour late.

[fl0under]

Here in Adelaide (South Australia) I've found the buses have improved a lot over the last decade, usually right on time, only with the occasional delay (like 5-10 mins).

There are real time data available for our transport system which I find to be super useful so I can leave to get to a stop at the right time.

[0xdeadb00f]

Or they just don't show up at all.

[cylinder]

I live in Sydney and my train is literally never late, always to the minute. I'm just slightly out of peak (just after 9am).

[coldtea]

>He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying.

Then don't arrange for "tight transfers"?

If "within 5 minutes" (or close, I'm guessing the rest of the time would be some "unbearable" late of 10 minutes or so?) messes your schedule you have a messed up schedule.

[ajdlinux]

I don't know about German train schedules specifically, but in life in general while avoiding tight transfers is generally a good idea sometimes you just have no say in the matter.

[wander_homer]

Their official route planer uses those "tight transfers" by default and calls them "Normal transfer duration".