Good point. Also there's no train from my house to the station, so I have to find alternative transport. How dare people criticise trains only where bad train services exist?

For context, the trip taken by the poster is the longest possible rail journey within Europe:

> In August 2026 a new cross border passenger rail connection opened between Tornio in Finland and Haparanda in Sweden. This then allows an uninterrupted rail journey from Kemijärvi in Finnish Lapland to Lagos in Portugal, the two places furthest apart in the EU that can be connected by train. I, Jon Worth, the person who worked this out, aim to be the first person to complete the whole trip, and set the first record time for this journey.

> And despite it all, the complaints are so numerous because the number of passengers and the number of trains is also so numerous! If a train on a track with 3 trains a day in France gets delayed, there will be no knock on effect on any other train. A delay to a train on a track with 3 trains every 10 minutes in Germany will have a much larger impact.

Okay sooo…explain japans nearly flawless record of trains? The whole country is littered with them.

This guy did a single train trip and experienced no delays there and has decided this is the factual experience for the entire history of the rail line. This joke became a joke for a reason. What an absurd article.

I’ve never experienced a delay on a delta flight in my life (having flown the for almost every flight) but that doesn’t mean they don’t have delays.

From my own experience, i have never been anywhere on time with german railroads

I think there are two main issues with trains in Germany. The first one is delays. It happens indeed more often than what I experienced with french trains, but I could handle this honestly. The second and bigger problem is that it seems like Deutsche Bahn never took their probable delays into account when planning your trip. How many times did I get a connection 15 min after my arrival? If you know your network is prone to delays, why do you keep putting travelers in this situation? Even worse, when your train is late and you miss your connection, there's not so much information about the available solutions. It always feels like it's a exceptional weird issue.

The only solution for Germany is to elect a strongman to make the trains run on time. You might even call it the Final Solution.

They can't just add 20 min to the arrival time on the schedule, so I do it in my mind. I just assume a bit of delay, like any reasonable adult when doing any trip and just don't have that negative vibe, where you say "not on time, again". For me DB is still the best way to cover long distances in Germany.

Just go to https://delaybahn.com/en and build your opinion on the data.

https://delaybahn.com/en/?fromId=A%3D1%40O%3DK%C3%B6ln+Hbf%4...

Click the "+30 min (28/30 days)" tags to see the delays of the last month.

Berlin started investing $10+ billion a year in Deutsche Bahn, mostly starting last year [1], the same year "Deutsche Bahn’s punctuality fell to the lowest level recorded in the 190 years" [2]. That investment figure should double this year [3].

Ignoring the pathetic state German rail fell to in the last twenty years is silly. That said, the problem seems to have been recognized with a path to returning to a solid state by the 2030s.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6f719dcd-1df0-4b45-af3b-b08ff5485...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/72839510-58de-4291-bf25-f3a34f0a5...

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/mytent_t/items/917467/en