So I paid 3x for comfort, only to get stuck standing in the aisle with all my luggage for 6 hours and an additional transfer. Yes, I can get the ticket refunded, but the point is not about the money. What should I expect out of a service that can so easily be completely downgraded at a moment's notice?
bombcar•39m ago
A cancelled train should be counted as delayed until the next train (close to the worst-case scenario) so as to discourage it.
But the real problem with deteriorating service is that people will put up with it for a long time - as long as they get to where they’re going eventually.
But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods.
And then you have no riders and trying to get back on track will take 20 years or more.
eigenspace•4m ago
The actual reason is that if a train is too late, it will conflict too much with the other scheduled trains and there's simply no room for it. Keeping the delayed train will just cause more delays for other trains.
The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains.
E.g. where i live in Cologne, there's typically a high speed train every 20 to 30 minutes to Frankfurt. If one train is delayed by 30 minutes, then suddenly you have two trains right on top of eachother heading to the same destination, both on very very congested lines that theyre simultaneously trying to do repairs and expansions to.
Those are the sorts of situations where it makes sense to just cancel the train, not because of metrics but because of actual track constraints.
delichon•2m ago
This is a country with a $2.68 per US gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 in the US. This is partly justified as nudging people to use less carbon intensive transport. That nudge works a lot less well when the lower carbon alternative is painfully worse than your car.
https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/