Being from another country with semi-good public transit, Berlin is a fucking epic place. I can get around city fast and most of the time I have options to choose on how I want to get from point A to B.
Also, hate how people like to dunk on German railroad comparing it to Japan. They fail to realize that German railroad also serves many countries in EU while Japan serves only to itself. It is much easier to plan out railways when your system is locked in one country.
As a German - a lot of our neighbours have significantly better rail. For some of them, delayed trains from Germany are a large cause of delay.
I like our train system, and use it a lot, but there is very significant room for improvement. According to the current statistic, 40% of long distance trains are late.
A lot of problems come from the half-aborted privatisation. The railway was turned into a public company, but the stock was never sold, so it’s owned by the state, but still a AG (plc?) that tries to run a profit.
Other countries aren’t the issue (and in fact switzerland mostly stopped allowing german trains into their network because they were the main reason for delays).
Japan has dedicated tracks for their shinkansen (and afaik for low speed passenger trains as well), whereas in germany ICE, IC, all regional trains, and freight trains share the same network. Different speeds on the same track lead to delays much faster as trains have to wait to be overtaken etc. The network is also operating above capacity (which has the obvious upside of better coverage/more frequent trains, but still we need more capacity). Many parts of the network are also simply old and have not been maintained well - we still have some manually operated signals ffs.
None of this is easy to fix and overall the railway network is still very good in an international comparison, but the neglect of the past 30 years is very obvious and has led to a lot of problems.
No it doesn’t. German ICE are a lot more affordable than French TGV. The price difference is really enortif you book a few weeks in advance. German ICE are more comfortable vehicles too, French TGV double deckers you’re a sardine in a can. German ICE serve every big-ish city quite well, centre focused French TGV serves 1 city extremely well, many other smaller big-ish cities are served more poorly.
Being from another country with semi-good public transit, Berlin is a fucking epic place. I can get around city fast and most of the time I have options to choose on how I want to get from point A to B.
Also, hate how people like to dunk on German railroad comparing it to Japan. They fail to realize that German railroad also serves many countries in EU while Japan serves only to itself. It is much easier to plan out railways when your system is locked in one country.
As a German - a lot of our neighbours have significantly better rail. For some of them, delayed trains from Germany are a large cause of delay.
I like our train system, and use it a lot, but there is very significant room for improvement. According to the current statistic, 40% of long distance trains are late.
A lot of problems come from the half-aborted privatisation. The railway was turned into a public company, but the stock was never sold, so it’s owned by the state, but still a AG (plc?) that tries to run a profit.
Other countries aren’t the issue (and in fact switzerland mostly stopped allowing german trains into their network because they were the main reason for delays).
Japan has dedicated tracks for their shinkansen (and afaik for low speed passenger trains as well), whereas in germany ICE, IC, all regional trains, and freight trains share the same network. Different speeds on the same track lead to delays much faster as trains have to wait to be overtaken etc. The network is also operating above capacity (which has the obvious upside of better coverage/more frequent trains, but still we need more capacity). Many parts of the network are also simply old and have not been maintained well - we still have some manually operated signals ffs.
None of this is easy to fix and overall the railway network is still very good in an international comparison, but the neglect of the past 30 years is very obvious and has led to a lot of problems.
That’s fine. Compare it to France or Italy then and it still comes out severely lacking.
But I’ve not had the pleasure of staying in Berlin long enough to become familiar with the transit. I’m sure it’s spectacular.
No it doesn’t. German ICE are a lot more affordable than French TGV. The price difference is really enortif you book a few weeks in advance. German ICE are more comfortable vehicles too, French TGV double deckers you’re a sardine in a can. German ICE serve every big-ish city quite well, centre focused French TGV serves 1 city extremely well, many other smaller big-ish cities are served more poorly.
I truly loved it so much! Plus if you drink a little too much you can just nap on the ring for a lil bit!