Let me tell you a story about two railways in two large European countries
In one, they’ve just completed the delivery of the biggest new fleet of high speed trains ever, and high speed trains run hourly on pretty much every line. Off peak tickets are cheap, and if you pay for a flexible ticket you can take any train.
In this country regional trains run hourly, are cheap to take (there’s a cheap national monthly pass) and passenger numbers are steadily rising.
@jon Well, maybe thinner timetables in France, but your train will arrive on time, whereas in Germany, even a short trip will get you massive delays on a regular basis.
In another European country - that neighbours the first - they’ve decreased the size of their fleet of high speed trains (although increased the capacity of the existing ones) but this means patchy timetables often with large gaps. At peak times trains are sold out - you cannot take them.
Resorting to regional trains is complex as these have been thinned, often with big gaps in the timetable, the last train around 8pm. There’s no national reduction scheme for these trains, but regional cards.
In both of these countries there are Ryanair style trains. They’re green in the first country, blue and pink in the second.
In the first they’re run by a completely separate firm, and are run when people most want them.
In the second country they’re run by the same firm as the regular high speed trains - this means some hours you get a regular one and some hours the Ryanair style one, with no logic as to which you’ll get.
In one of these countries trains are run by a mixture of public and private operators. Some open access, some where the private companies won competitive tenders.
In the other the vast, vast majority of trains, and still all regional trains, are run by the state owned operator.
In railways - broadly - you get what you invest in. The more you invest, the better the outcome - in terms of quality of your rail service for passengers.
What combination of public or private firms you have running your trains isn’t the central point, not least as the tracks are owned and operated by the state anyway.
And please don’t give me the “yeah but German trains break down”. I know they do. They do because Germany runs a hell of a lot of trains on a decrepit network. Things break.
Run 3 trains a day on a line and if one breaks down you’re not going to delay the other two. Run 300 trains a day on a line and it’s different.
@jon I am just writing on an article about the heavy load of our main lines and what this means for infrastructure (which is often responsible for delays).
More or less a "will Generalsanierung help?".
@elba013@jon I’m going with: no. Or at least not if Generalsanierung means “keep the status quo.” If you read the reports for the “Überlastete Schienenwege,” there’s always a lot of stuff like “add a crossover here, add an extra block there” that make you want to yell “Why haven’t you done that twenty years ago?”
But what I think is really necessary is Utrecht-style redesigns of major intersections to allow independent parallel movement of all important routes.
@f09fa681@elba013@jon That’s repeated lot. But for main lines, I’d like to see some proof. Bundesbahn also had a tendency to cut corners. For instance, missing intermediary block signals for the opposite track is largely a legacy.
@jon@elba013 I’m not sure that’s a good argument for not trying. Overall, DB seems to be getting better at proactively including local communities. And, frankly, they have a point. Railway noise is still noise and should be minimised as much as possible.
@partim@elba013 Yes, but it does make any upgrade damned hard. Even electrification projects. And Lärmschutz is what’s been dragging the Bamberg upgrades.
@elba013@partim and so we come back to Deutschlandtakt. It gives you a framework to answer what to do, and why. It avoids getting stuck in micro scale battles.
@partim@jnbhlr@jon Yes, but it is Wissing. He talks about Infrastrukturfonds, which includes road construction. Organizations like Allianz pro Schiene demand a Schienenfonds, because there is not only a gap in rail financing between Germany and CH or AT, but also between rail financing and road financing.
@elba013@jnbhlr@jon I think the important thing here is to make financing dependable. Less so for the money itself but to convince companies to built up planning and engineering capacity again. Right now, lack of that feels like a much bigger, underreported issue to me. A mixed fond is better than no fond and still better than maybe an exclusive fond in maybe five years.
@elba013@jnbhlr@jon I see this primarily as a signal that having a railway engineering company in Germany has a future at all. Everything you hear from the industry is rather quite depressing. And with good reason.
@partim@jnbhlr@jon Beside “Why haven’t you done that twenty years ago?” the second central sentence seems me to be "It comes to late". The "Repriorisierung" DB is talking about means "everything later". And even the money for the later phases of Generalsanierung is not clear.
Beginning now with a new form of financing - when will effects take place?
@elba013@jnbhlr@jon We are where we are. It’s going to be painful the next ten years no matter what. But now is the time to set the conditions for a better future. Just saying “Here’s forty billion” when there’s no way this can even be spent doesn’t help. (And have that followed up with “Nah, just kidding” is making everything much, much worse.)
(And generally, I think Germany has a better railway system than France - for some of the reasons outlined in the thread. But that’s not the point of the thread. The point is that “German trains break down” or some narrow view on public vs private are probably the wrong ways of examining the problem)
@jon@Tho99 There's actually three systems in France: TGV and the occasional night train or slower train that does the same route, intercity (a moniker that mostly means "doesn't go to Paris"), and TER (regional). And most of it is, indeed, run by SNCF, which doesn't see much need to encourage use or argue too strongly for investment.
@jon@Tho99 The problem with the regions running trains seems to be that after nearly half a century of pairing down regional trains, neither elected officials nor the public really understands what they're missing. Some regions are improving things (Grand Est, Pays de la Loire), but far too slowly.
@jon@Tho99 And don't get me started on bicycle capacity, or easy/cheap/existant bicycle rental at stations, or cross-region ticketing (nevermind cross-border).
@Kaetchi It works in Czechia, Italy too. And doesn’t in Sweden imho. Many different factors - in terms of political accountability, investment, doing it gradually (Germany) and one shot (UK). Also the UK’s infrastructure was poor when they did it.
@jon I like the Czech or the Austrian models with there (mostly) integrated tariff systems more than the ones for example in Italy. (I would also say that the UK system isn't that bad, apart the fact that travelling by train is often way too expensive in the UK and they're facing similar infrastructure and capacity problems as in Germany) @Kaetchi
@wrzlbrnft@Kaetchi UK hasn’t built anything for a hell of a long time though. It might maintain what it has a little better than Germany, but damn some major works are needed! Timetables, stations, some of the trains are good though.
@jon reminds me of a comment someone responsible for managing the regional network at the national railway company made on how they were proud of their 95+% punctuality rate, like yeah of course you get that kind of numbers when you only run one train every once in a while, other countries achieve that same kind of results with way more frequencies
but i'm probably not teaching you anything new to be honest
@jon n=2 ist eine dünne Basis. die beiden länder sind etwa stark unterschiedlich bevölkert.
die Schweiz und Österreich sprechen dafür, dass der politische wille das entscheidende ist und uk spricht sehr dafür, dass private ohne strikte vorgaben kein nutzergerechtes angebot aufbauen.
die grünen züge in de sind reine rosinenpickerei auf finanziell intetessanten strecken
@aburgerabz Don’t care. I can give you this as n=27 as well, if I had time for 200 toots. And at least Flix has an upside for passengers. OUIGO doesn’t.
@jon as a Belgian with German family and about 30 years of experience using both nets: the performance and trustworthiness of the German railways crashed after privatisation. Long story short: TGV is now more reliable than ICE.
Also, SNCF status is far more nuanced than you paint here. They operate mostly as a private company.
@kaat0@jon Oh, interesting. I think the main difference is that German infrastructure has a tendency to be over-engineered which makes it expensive while France’s high-speed network was built on the cheap but exists. Beyond that, both networks severly lack investment, it just shows more in Germany because of significantly more traffic.
@partim@jon@kaat0 Also helps that France is not as densely populated, with major cities who want to be on a high speed line every 20 km. I cannot imagine how to route completely new high speed lines. At the same time, since it’s so (mostly) densely populated high speed isn’t everything. Regular, reliable service to major conglomerates – and working connections – at 150 km would already be amazing.
@kupfers@jon@kaat0 I think the argument for HS2 in the UK – that it is less about high speed but about separating long distance express services from regional and goods services and that doing that through a new line rather than quadrupling is both easier and ultimately more reliable – applies to Germany, too.
Obviously, new lines are more difficult in Rhein-Ruhr that really needs them, but, e.g., Frankfurt – Fulda is a no brainer.
@jon Is there in France a political discussion about SNCF? In Germany there are always such discussions about DB. Mainly infrastructure, but often closely linked to long-distance service.
@elba013 Not really. The argument is mostly whether to build new high speed lines or not, and a bit if regions should do competitive tendering. But there’s no discussion about who the railway is really for.
@jon
I’m confused. What are those privately run green trains? I only ever see DB and then the occasional regional trains run by provincial governments or Veolia, Arriva etc.
Judging by the colour green, the Wikipedia article on trains in Germany suggests it’s FlixTrain - but while I’ve seen people cram into their buses I’ve never seen a Flix train? Maybe I’m just out of touch because I mostly take IC/ICEs, but what % rail passengers in Germany are carried by Flix (or even non-DB)?
But most of the France parameters fit Austria as well. Steady increase in passenger numbers, at least hourly trains even on most of regional lines,
cheap monthly tickets. Only high speed trains like TGV are missing. Would not make much sense here, either.
@harkank No. Those are the German numbers you’re citing there. Germany has a steady increase in passenger numbers. Germany is the first country, France the second.
@lewd And it actually is. Only infrastructure and reliability is better in France, but last one might also be due to the sparse train offer there. (fewer trains cause less disruptions) @jon
@Schleifleistenbruch@wrzlbrnft@jon Yeah, quality of our infra is pretty low in regards of track works, but our stations are better e.g. any super small TER stop has a building or at least a shelter.
@lewd@Schleifleistenbruch@wrzlbrnft Sure. But every French train station needs a waiting room because you will be waiting - because the timetables are so thin 🙂
@jon@lewd@Schleifleistenbruch@wrzlbrnft German station would profit very much from good waiting rooms. You don‘t need them in Japan either because of frequent trains (not just on Shinkansen lines!), but the experience with them is much, much better.
@mikey179 As for that I appreciate ÖBB stations very much. Apart from the great stations many smaller stations offer some kind of waiting areas and toilets but are still (mostly) clean, even if they're unstaffed. I remember the 90's when most of these smaller stations looked sad and abandoned. ÖBB Infra made a huge effort there. @jon@lewd@Schleifleistenbruch
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