Deutsche Bahn struggles to shake off 'travel hell' reputation
Deutsche Bahn faces challenges with delays and infrastructure decay, leading to a tarnished reputation. Despite recent investments and modernization efforts, disruptions persist, emphasizing the urgent need for extensive repairs and funding.
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Deutsche Bahn, Germany's once well-respected rail network, is struggling to overcome its 'travel hell' reputation due to frequent delays and deteriorating infrastructure. Recent investments aim to address the issues, but the system's wear and tear, compounded by increased demand, has led to a national embarrassment. The company's modernization program involves significant closures of busy lines for repairs, causing disruptions for customers. Past under-investment and a focus on road construction have left the rail system in a dire state. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government is now increasing funding for rail infrastructure, but challenges remain in securing necessary finances. Despite efforts to improve services, delays and cancellations persist, affecting travelers and even public figures. Deutsche Bahn's struggle highlights the need for extensive repairs and modernization to restore the network's efficiency and reliability.
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13 commentsCompare with Belgium. For many years it ranked below moldovia in the world postal reliability report. Delivery is unreliable, many packages disappear. During COVID I wanted to buy stamps. In Germany you just print the stamps. No printer? Just use a pen and write a code on the letter. In Belgium they offered to send me stamps by postal mail. After I lost many packages and one was going back already to the US (address cant be found) I wrote a real nasty email to the Belgian minister in charge of the post office. They actually rerouted my us package back and were able to deliver it :-). The postman got a nasty talk with his both for forging my signature for packages he just put in front of the door and that goes stolen. 500 dollar loss...
I spend so much time waiting for delayed trains that I made a social media account to keep track of them. In June alone I experienced 15 days with delays - shortest I keep record of is 10 minutes, longest in June was 43 minutes. And I have a friend whose weekly delays are hours long.
If I commuted daily (and I don't) my own stats mean I have a 50/50 chance of missing a connection. For my regional trains that means I need to buffer at least half an hour for a 45 minutes trip. Factor in the lack of benches (God forbid the homeless sit on them), the dirty stations, the drug users living in them, the broken equipment...
Two trivia points: the "Deutschlandtakt" program will supposedly bring the trains back to their former 90s glory. It is scheduled to be finished in 2070. And the government is reportedly planning to redirect train repair funds to repairing highways instead [1].
The train situation is bad and they deserve every critic they get.
[1] https://archive.is/LsMab, in German
me and a friend want to travel through eastern europe by train next year - we purposefully exclude germany from our trip because we fear that we'll miss a connection[1]. this can happen in other countries, too, but we all have personal stories where german trains have f*cked us.
[1] Germany isn't eastern europe but we'll start from central europe so germany could've been a destination in our trip. now we'll go via austria...
https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/03/19/the-breitspurbahn-o...
Just kidding
Is this economic? Can it pay for its own repairs?
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