Your Deutsche Bahn “joke” is now not humorous (if it ever was)

Before beginning my report try between Kemijärvi, Finland and Lagos, Portugal, individuals instructed me again and again it might break down in Germany. So a lot in order that I even tried to re-but (pre-but?) some of the likely critique.

Now, having made the journey, and none of the full delay of 25 hours 22 minutes (making the journey 125 hours 31 minutes, slightly than the 100 hours 9 minutes foreseen) was attributable to Germany. 24 hours was Sweden, the remainder Portugal.

But the “jokes” carry on coming – simply see the feedback underneath this LinkedIn post from The European Correspondent for instance. Ha ha, 100 hours of the journey will need to have been Germany. Oh aren’t you humorous!

There is some extent at 31:27 in the film about the project that underlines the problem. I’m in Mannheim, and there are three completely different trains departing to Basel inside an hour.

Between Badajoz and Entroncamento – at the moment the one prepare operating into Portugal from Spain at all (as a result of Porto – Vigo is at the moment a bus between Valença do Minho and Vigo) – there are two trains a day, they usually each run within the afternoon, and it’s a railbus in-built 1955 with awful air con.

In northern Sweden it’s little higher. One third of the nation (north of Umeå) depends on a single, single monitor, electrified line, and locations like Haparanda and Kiruna therefore have a handful of passenger trains a day.

But just about nobody is complaining about Badajoz, as a result of nobody takes that prepare there. They drive. Rail just isn’t an choice to get from Spain to Portugal. As I put it in a current publication, passengers do not complain about trains they cannot take, because those trains do not exist.

Now, do not get me flawed – German rail has main points, most notably the financial backing backlog which means issues break down on a regular basis with the tracks, indicators, bridges and so on., and so reliability is poor. But given the community is so dense, and there are completely different routes you’ll be able to take between all of the completely different cities, you’ll usually get there ultimately.

And regardless of all of it, the complaints are so quite a few as a result of the variety of passengers and the variety of trains is additionally so quite a few! If a prepare on a monitor with 3 trains a day in France will get delayed, there can be no knock on impact on another prepare. A delay to a prepare on a monitor with 3 trains each 10 minutes in Germany could have a a lot bigger affect.

Ultimately any German who has ever voted for any occasion aside from the Grüne additionally deserves what they get. The Third Way / Die neue Mitte of Gerhard Schröder from the late Nineteen Nineties is on the root of all of this, however twelve years of CSU transport ministers left their mark as effectively, and whereas Volker Wissing (FDP) redeemed himself as at the very least being higher than his occasion, the present authorities appears to be again to the place all of it was pre-Wissing. So for those who’re laughing at Deutsche Bahn, and voted for a type of events that helped cook dinner up the present scenario, effectively, that is at the very least partially on you.

And for those who suppose that is simply rail with an issue, effectively I’ve a Berlin-Brandenburg airport, or cracking bridges on German Autobahns to point out you.

Meanwhile my ICE, a Siemens constructed ICE3neo, is someplace between Aachen and Liège as I hit Publish on this put up. It’s effectively engineered, clean, quiet, the on board employees impeccable, and I booked it on Europe’s greatest rail web site – bahn.de, and right this moment it’s even on time. Give me this over the railbus to Entroncamento any day!