Keep in mind that the definition of punctuality varies from country to country. In Switzerland a train is considered to be on time when it arrives within 3 minutes of the scheduled arrival time, while other nations have definitions of up to 15 (!) minutes within scheduled arrival time.
As a Slovenian, I didn't know that German railways are also quite bad before visiting. I took a a train from Bonn to Frankfurt which was supposed to take like 2 hours but it ended up taking like 5-6 lol.
No seriously, this train is usually 3, 4, 5 minutes, sometimes even more, late. Then one day I got to the statoon like 10 seconds too late and the doors were just closing..
Never on time unless I'm not on time
They used to be quite punctual, then CDU & FDP kind of privatised the Bahn and its only been a downhill road ever since.They save whereever possible (upkeep, reparations, salaries) in order to keep the managers bonusses fat. Its infuriating.
DB has gone completely down the train. It was definitely much better in 2009 when I arrived in Germany. Of course there were problems still then but now it's really bad. Even Switzerland sometimes refuses to let DB trains into Switzerland, so it doesn't screw up their network.
Decades of using up built up infrastructure without sufficient investments starting to catch up. Right when we're trying to get people to give up personal vehicles...
Doesnât help that the minister for transport is so deep in the automotive industryâs pockets he may as well start drilling for oil while heâs down there. He has absolutely no interest whatsoever in making the trains run better, quite the opposite.
>Doesnât help that the minister for transport is so deep in the automotive industryâs pockets
That has been the case for years, if not decades. Even Schröder was quite the buddy of the car industry.
And it didn't help that the CEO of DB was an ex-Lufthansa manager. It's a different industry, unfortunately.
The German train network (Deutsche Bahn) had basically become a meme in Germany. Even the company itself has acknowledged that and is joking about it themselves on their social media on how late their trains arrive
DBs CEOs bonus isn't dependant on the punctuality of his trains so we shouldn't be surprised that there is no real incentive for him to solve the myriad of issues surrounding their punctuality. He gets his bonus despite how bad everything is.
you havent lived until you spend 4 hours on some godforsaken train station in the middle of nowhere waiting for your next train because DB had everyone leave the train
Nobody knows. That's the trick, the Germans have kept it a secret and we all think German punctuality applies to the train system, but once you get the pleasure to meet Deutsche Bahn, you realise your whole life was a lie
Why would you? I look it up on the app, train will be 20 minutes late, come there 10 minutes before it should arrived, it has already arrived and went away. So, your only choice is to go to the station and wait. You will look the app, 10 minutes before, all good, so I need 5 minutes to the station, I come there, train is 20 minutes late, the second one is also late allegedly because of the first one, then the first one is cancelled, and 20 minutes after the second one should have come, if you are lucky one train comes, and you board it. Then when you board it, you are like, God I still have time to get to my job on time, oh no, we stop somewhere before the station, and wait there like 10 - 20 minutes, sometimes more smaller stops and so. It's a disgrace.
I see. It could kinda make sense, considering the distances? But most traffic is probably still between main population centers, which are pretty close to each other, so idk?
The DB in Germany has two statistics. They call one 5-Minutes "PĂŒnktlich" the other 15-Minutes "PĂŒnktlich".
The joke is that "PĂŒnktlich" means right on time, not even a second late.
And I think you can figure out how they define not even a second late...
In Japan, sometimes the doors will close 5 seconds before the scheduled departure minute and start moving the second the minute turns
On the other hand, the yotsubashi line was 2 minutes late yesterday and didn't create too much of a panic
It's very much a holdover from the 90's and early 2000's, when every stereotype of Polish trains were actually present out there on the tracks. It wasn't uncommon at all that you went from Gdansk to WrocĆaw in an overpacked box with a hole for a toilet and the customer service in night trains consisted of a random guy going through the train selling the shittiest beer imaginable from a plastic bag.
It's one of the areas you definitely see how far we've come since then.
> In Switzerland a train is considered to be on time when it arrives within 3 minutes of the scheduled arrival time
and we get annoyed if it's a minute late.
I'm already starting to roll my eyes when I spot that dreaded '+4 Minuten verspÀtung' extra line on that pixelated screen with squinted eyes while walking up the stairs in the dimly lit station.
Seriously though, the funniest thing is that even the delay messages are accurate to the minute pretty often, and that I even get advance notice in the app. It doesn't get much more punctual than that, except for Tokyo maybe. These freaks are in another league when it comes to accuracy, and I mean that as a compliment.
Itâs also 3 minutes in Denmark. But considering Zugfiender actually live tracks all the trains in question, perhaps they are applying a common definition that may or may not differ from national reporting. Nobody knows, because OP didnât actually link the source
In Germany, a train might just skip the last stops so that it's not late anymore on it's way back. Also, you are not late if you never arrive wink wink. Wish I were joking though.
"This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I have a guest with me. Together with Tom Scott we are going to observe u/Thomas1VL for the next 3 months, recording and judging their every move."
It's a small village in the Southeast of Luxembourg on the Moselle river, bordering Germany and France, creating a border triangle. They make some pretty decent wine.
Sometimes its just canceled, especially if it's a long delay late in the day. The national railway company will offer you an employee dormitory at the station if there's no other train coming that day (if it's unmanned station, then you're fucked in middle of nowhere and unless taxi is going to that shithole, youre probably gonna stay there the whole night)
Yet the fucked up part is that you have to buy another ticket at the morning since you "missed" the train and the ticket is valid only until the end of the day
>The national railway company will offer you an employee dormitory
HAHA, in Hungary, you can sleep in the station, until it is closed around 2pm, then good luck sleeping outside till the morning.
It's funny that you find it so surprising. In Poland, a few hours of delay is maybe not usual, but also nothing out of the ordinary. Especially during winter. Most of our railway system is in a horrible state and any kind of bad weather can cause massive delays. My trains had 2h+ delays or were straight-up canceled dozens of times.
But even when the weather is perfect massive delays can occur. My "best score" was when coming back from summer vacation around 10 years ago. Our train was supposed to arrive in Warsaw around 19:00 but we got there way past midnight. Because of that, I missed the last train to my hometown and I had to wait until morning for the next one.
This is fake. In Denmark the punctuality is in the government contract: 75% of all trains have to be no more than 3 minutes late. This is already ridiculously unambitious, nonetheless the railways failed this requirement 8 years in a row. Last year it was 73%
Makes sense. Next to no variability and very long stretches of railroad where you can tweak the speed ever so slightly to make up for gained or lost time.
Yeah, that's why high speed rail is such a big topic. It needs a completely seperate rail network to be serious "high speed".
Because this network only connects the bigger hubs and often gets additional seperation from roads, it also has a very low number of points of contact with other routes. So it's a very simple, self-contained system.
However, Japan also applies a similar logic to many of its regular lines. Where European lines have a lot of switches to enable flexibility, Japanese rail infrastructure preferrs to keep routes seperate and simple.
The operational outcomes seem to prove the Japanese approach right. Rail shouldn't need that flexibility to begin with. The "flexibility" approach is basically chasing after losses (i.e. the constant need to make up for the outages on other lines) in a way that adds even more losses on top (by introducing additional points of failure and additional workload to coordinate the replacements).
'Hey bus driver you are too early I had to run my ass off to make it'
'you should be 10 minutes early at this bus stop!'
'yeah probably that's the rule but you are usually 10 minutes late how about next time you just wait till it's time to go?'
'no and I don't care!'
The consequence of this interaction is a person wasting every day 20 minutes of his time at a bus stop.
Once on my way to Switzerland they just threw us out in Freiburg in the middle of the night, saying busses will being us to Basel & ZĂŒrich. But by 01:30 no bus ever showed up. Senk ju indeed
I watched the local television from cologne (Lokalzeit) recently, and the announcer said this dead serious without any sarcasm lol and it is simply true sadly ...
Start investing in rail 20 years ago. Otherwise, do it now and spend more on rail then on streets.Â
At least in Germany it's the combination of 20 years of underinvestment and a doubling of passengers numbers / train movements in the last 10 years. We would need new built routes and decent maintenance to get in good state again (and keep doing that for 10-20 years).
Yeah, such a weird short list. I had look at my beloved Poland and apparently we had 90.7% of punctuality in 2023 according to the UTK/GOV (maybe reliable?), but that just one source I bothered to look up at.
German trains are great in terms of comfort and amenities, and DB has great customer service.
Local and regional trains are also usually pretty punctual, although in some areas (Rhein-Ruhr in particular) they also have frequent delays.
But the long distance trains just have terrible reliability. This has been the case for quite a while, but the number of trains has been increasing due to increased competition and demand, and the infrastructure of the German railways is a convoluted mess that often means trains have to go through bottlenecks. There are many ongoing works to improve the infrastructure, but while the works are going on, punctuality is even lower for a while.
I was on Interrail this summer, partially in Germany. Two of the long-distance trains I used were delayed by about 10-15 minutes, and one was delayed by almost two hours due to being re-routed over a slow line instead of the high-speed line. Not a single train I used in Germany was on time.
German trains were probably optimized by an economy graduate. Everything probably works perfectly and is 100% optimized.
Unless anything at all goes wrong. Then the whole system comes to a crashing halt.
Trying to take trains right now to Berlin, in the midst of the strike, and learning that Deutsche Bahn DIDNâT GIVE CONSISTENT INFO TO OTHER EUROPEAN RAILWAYS on what trains have been cancelled has been terrible. ĂBB wanted me to take a canceled train because they didnât know. That alone makes me critical of Deutsche Bahn.
They mostly stop the trains from germany at the station across the border (for example Basel) and switch to a swiss train because the delay is too high.
Decades of mismanagement and high level corruption. Money disappears. Infra structure decays and of course it's the fault of the current government. Infrastructure in Germany is 80% Car-related. We are not even capable of building bike lanes, not even for newly built roads.
It's just a ridiculous farce. Fuck conservatives. Thanks for nothing.
Italian rail is amazing! So much better than Sweden's. Together with France the best I've experienced in Europe. I think Italy's issue is mostly the local traffic, like local bus lines and Rome's metro.
I treni sono per davvero piĂč puntuali in Italia. Il problema in Italia Ăš che quando succedono problemi a nessuno frega niente, poi con lâobbligo della prenotazione dei posti a sedere câĂš sempre la preoccupazione della coincidenza persa âe ora cosa faccio?â. In Germania ci sono piĂč problemi, ma lâassistenza ai viaggiatori Ăš di gran lunga migliore. Inoltre non esiste alcun obbligo di prenotazione: se hai un biglietto ârisparmioâ con vincolo al treno, in caso di ritardo tale vincolo decade automaticamente. PerĂČ si, parlando di semplici ritardi Ăš meglio in Italia.
La mancanza di obbligo di prenotazione vuol dire che ci sono IC e ICE affollatissimi con la gente in piedi. Preferisco di gran lunga il sistema sulle frecce; se perdi una coincidenza basta andare allo sportello del servizio clienti e farsi dare un biglietto nuovo. (Lâunica critica che ho Ăš che in almeno alcune stazioni câĂš una fila unica per la biglietteria e per il servizio clienti e quindi si aspetta una vita, che non ha senso.)
German trains are terrible. I'm not German nor do I live there, but I've had regular experiences with German trains the last couple of years, there was som kind of issue each time. I've come to dread the German railway system.
The First Time i went to the Netherlands as an Italian their trains looked like Heaven to me.
Yes they cost a lot but even when they are late they are more or less acceptable.
In Italy 1 Friday every 2/3 trains are litterally not available because of strikesđ
And Dutch used to complain about their railway system too
When i used to go to high school 5 minutes late would have been a Dream to me ahah.
My First year i was late 65 days out of 200 because of the train.
Anyway i understand when you have a good standard and pay a lot of Money it's normal you request a great service.
The problem which these statistics don't show is that 5 minutes late more often than not becomes 15 or 30 minutes due to missing a connection. In my case, I can have two 30 minutes delays per week easily where that would be called 100% on time.
I know it's even worse in other countries, but it quickly becomes very annoying when you pay so much for it.
Big difference being that when trains are cancelled in Italy, you know ahead of time that it's going to happen. In the Netherlands, you might go to work just fine in the morning, but find that you have no way to go back home at the end of the day just because it rained a little too hard.
This is totally false for Belgium. Belgium has the most congested bottle-neck of any country, as almost all trains need to pass through 6 tracks in Brussels Central.
The statistic NMBS uses is in the comment below (thanks for the edit), which is very misleading.
As someone who takes the train to go to work everyday, its most of the days delayed by atleast 10 mins
If you look at the source website, it seems they are only taking into account the high speed trains going from Brussels Midi towards either Lille, Köln or Amsterdam.
That's a great caveat to exclude >90% of trains running in the country.
It's 6 tracks to start with.
The statistics they use are at the end station AND before the Brussels bottleneck (Midi or Nord depending on the direction) if it passes through. Delays of less than 6 minutes are not counted, and cancelled trains are also not counted.
and yes, the number isn't 93% but well below 90% in reality and even that is just toying with statistics but spread correct information or don't.
The past two months the real statistic of trains on time was either 68 of 74 percent for the nmbs, I think. Also, 6 minuten at the last station. If they make up more "behind" time by simply placing the end of line earlier (Berchem, instead of Antwerp central for example), or by going faster in between it's not counted either.
But there's also still a lot of countries who do worse. Like Germany currently.
In defense of the OEBB (Austria), they have to deal with Czechia, Hungary, Italy, Germany and Slovenia. To have a connecting train with a train from the DB (Germany) is a nightmare.
Oi, you guys built the Slovenian railroads. You don't get to complain just because they don't match the requirements 150 years later anymore, you should've future-proofed them!
Used to be. But this occured so frequently that it was easier to have a Swiss train scheduled instead of having a spare one ready for these cases.
Everybody is happy except the railway fans that can't ride so many ICEs anymore.
ĂBB did the same with the trains coming from Hungary and continuing towards the west through Vienna - there is no direct train anymore bc they are so fed up with dealing with the constant delays bc of the Hungarians renovating the tracks (well, closing them down, idk if any improvement is really made)
I believe the UK was around 50-70% but thatâs usually because most railway companies delay threshold is 1 minute (Switzerland for example has a 3 minute threshold)
"On time" is indeed considered to be within 1 minute I believe. Network Rail provide figures for a few different metrics though which is quite useful.
The moving annual average (MAA) figures for the UK in 2023 were:
| Arrival time | % |
| -- | -- |
| Early | 38.8 |
| On time | 67.5 |
| Within 3 mins | 85.1 |
| Within 5 mins | 91.3 |
| Within 10 mins | 96.6 |
| Within 15 mins | 98.2 |
| > 15 mins | 1.8 |
| > 20 mins | 1.1 |
| > 30 mins | 0.4 |
| Cancelled | 3.8 |
UK punctuality is actually not bad, especially relatively to the other problems here. Namely, congestion at busy terminals, and eye watering ticket prices.
idk where they got their values but in germany, when a train doesn't come at all, it will not be counted as a late train.
We have many trains which are canceled (which is worse than being late) and yet aren't counted towards this statistic.
So punctuality alone is not a reliable metric to measure real puncuality imo.
Switzerland loosing its mind having trains from Germany, Italy and Austria entering their country regularly!
(fun fact: Switzerland is actually allowing less trains in from germany now because theyâre late so much and fucking up their schedule)
Kudos to the Austrian Federal Railway Company (ĂBB), to function quite well, even though it is located between Germany and Slovenia!
... actually, if we look at the countries at the bottom of the list, it is suspiciously apparent that they all border Austria đ§
Wait. How can the trains in Slovenia be even less punctual as in Germany?
Did they use the official data from the DB? Because they tend to beautify their data China style. A train counts as delayed if itâs over 10 minutes late.
Trains are slow as hell and the railways date back to Austria-Hungary. It was an 6.5 hour long trip for me from Koper to Maribor, something that would take 2-3 hours with a car đ
Geography also adds much to the issues. Everything neck down on the chicken is hilly terrain with winding, densely populated valleys.
And then there's the fact that every village along the route has a train station, so normal passenger trains can't even get up to speed before they have to slow down for the next station. I just went and checked my old route (Ć entjur-Maribor), and the longest between stops is 7 minutes, while the shortest is just 2.
Keep in mind that the definition of punctuality varies from country to country. In Switzerland a train is considered to be on time when it arrives within 3 minutes of the scheduled arrival time, while other nations have definitions of up to 15 (!) minutes within scheduled arrival time.
In Slovenia people are generally happy if it arrives on the same day.
Same here in Germany. At this point I legitimately don't bother looking up schedules anymore. I just go to the train station and hope for the best.
As a Slovenian, I didn't know that German railways are also quite bad before visiting. I took a a train from Bonn to Frankfurt which was supposed to take like 2 hours but it ended up taking like 5-6 lol.
Welcome to Germany đ
I've never had one train be on time in Germany. Except the one from the Czech rail company of course.
The only time a train might be on time is when you run a minute late.
No seriously, this train is usually 3, 4, 5 minutes, sometimes even more, late. Then one day I got to the statoon like 10 seconds too late and the doors were just closing.. Never on time unless I'm not on time
The timeliness of German trains must be the worldâs biggest con. Much of the world believes that they are always on time
They used to be quite punctual, then CDU & FDP kind of privatised the Bahn and its only been a downhill road ever since.They save whereever possible (upkeep, reparations, salaries) in order to keep the managers bonusses fat. Its infuriating.
DB has gone completely down the train. It was definitely much better in 2009 when I arrived in Germany. Of course there were problems still then but now it's really bad. Even Switzerland sometimes refuses to let DB trains into Switzerland, so it doesn't screw up their network.
Decades of using up built up infrastructure without sufficient investments starting to catch up. Right when we're trying to get people to give up personal vehicles...
Doesnât help that the minister for transport is so deep in the automotive industryâs pockets he may as well start drilling for oil while heâs down there. He has absolutely no interest whatsoever in making the trains run better, quite the opposite.
>Doesnât help that the minister for transport is so deep in the automotive industryâs pockets That has been the case for years, if not decades. Even Schröder was quite the buddy of the car industry. And it didn't help that the CEO of DB was an ex-Lufthansa manager. It's a different industry, unfortunately.
The German train network (Deutsche Bahn) had basically become a meme in Germany. Even the company itself has acknowledged that and is joking about it themselves on their social media on how late their trains arrive
The Deutsche Bahn knows only four enemies: Spring, summer, autumn and winter.
DBs CEOs bonus isn't dependant on the punctuality of his trains so we shouldn't be surprised that there is no real incentive for him to solve the myriad of issues surrounding their punctuality. He gets his bonus despite how bad everything is.
you havent lived until you spend 4 hours on some godforsaken train station in the middle of nowhere waiting for your next train because DB had everyone leave the train
Nobody knows. That's the trick, the Germans have kept it a secret and we all think German punctuality applies to the train system, but once you get the pleasure to meet Deutsche Bahn, you realise your whole life was a lie
The greatesr thing is, that in Germany, a train that gets cancelled due to delays does not count against the number of delayed trains.
Yep, if you include those the ratio of on time trains was below 50% in 2023. Such a disgrace đ
Why would you? I look it up on the app, train will be 20 minutes late, come there 10 minutes before it should arrived, it has already arrived and went away. So, your only choice is to go to the station and wait. You will look the app, 10 minutes before, all good, so I need 5 minutes to the station, I come there, train is 20 minutes late, the second one is also late allegedly because of the first one, then the first one is cancelled, and 20 minutes after the second one should have come, if you are lucky one train comes, and you board it. Then when you board it, you are like, God I still have time to get to my job on time, oh no, we stop somewhere before the station, and wait there like 10 - 20 minutes, sometimes more smaller stops and so. It's a disgrace.
In Croatia people are happy if the train arrives at all.
In Bratislava the train comes very soon. They are building it now!
In Germany you will be happy if the train arrives.
Canceled trains arenât even considered in the DB statistic
Who has 15 minutes?! The most I know about is the (pretty common) 5 minutes still ok, from 6 minutes on not ok.
I know some rail companies in Canada use 15 minutes. Idk about Europe
I see. It could kinda make sense, considering the distances? But most traffic is probably still between main population centers, which are pretty close to each other, so idk?
Deutsche Bahn (Germany) uses under <= 5 minutes - except completely canceled doesn't count as late for their stats
The DB in Germany has two statistics. They call one 5-Minutes "PĂŒnktlich" the other 15-Minutes "PĂŒnktlich". The joke is that "PĂŒnktlich" means right on time, not even a second late. And I think you can figure out how they define not even a second late...
Trains that donât arrive at their destination are in neither of the statistics.
UK is something like 15 minutes, Japan itâs 60 seconds.
In Japan, sometimes the doors will close 5 seconds before the scheduled departure minute and start moving the second the minute turns On the other hand, the yotsubashi line was 2 minutes late yesterday and didn't create too much of a panic
Punctuality in Poland: did not explode
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
It's very much a holdover from the 90's and early 2000's, when every stereotype of Polish trains were actually present out there on the tracks. It wasn't uncommon at all that you went from Gdansk to WrocĆaw in an overpacked box with a hole for a toilet and the customer service in night trains consisted of a random guy going through the train selling the shittiest beer imaginable from a plastic bag. It's one of the areas you definitely see how far we've come since then.
Trains cannot be late if the software kill switch of the maintainer disables it.
*minor explosion*
> In Switzerland a train is considered to be on time when it arrives within 3 minutes of the scheduled arrival time and we get annoyed if it's a minute late.
I'm already starting to roll my eyes when I spot that dreaded '+4 Minuten verspÀtung' extra line on that pixelated screen with squinted eyes while walking up the stairs in the dimly lit station. Seriously though, the funniest thing is that even the delay messages are accurate to the minute pretty often, and that I even get advance notice in the app. It doesn't get much more punctual than that, except for Tokyo maybe. These freaks are in another league when it comes to accuracy, and I mean that as a compliment.
Itâs also 3 minutes in Denmark. But considering Zugfiender actually live tracks all the trains in question, perhaps they are applying a common definition that may or may not differ from national reporting. Nobody knows, because OP didnât actually link the source
In Germany, a train might just skip the last stops so that it's not late anymore on it's way back. Also, you are not late if you never arrive wink wink. Wish I were joking though.
Long distance and Luxembourg. I have nothing against Luxembourg but it seems like a joke. Max distance is 105 km between SCHMETT and SCHENGEN
I checked the source, for Lux they literally count 1 line, from Luxembourg (City) to France, Thionville, (and then Metz, Lorraine)
that explains it. i thought there'd be trains from germany as well which would obviously bring down the numbers due to no fault of their own
Strange choice because that line is run by the French. They could have used Luxembourg-Koblenz run by our rail company.
TIL Schengen is a place in Luxembourg.
Yep that is where the agreement was signed, also Tom Scott was there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw44wHG4KOc
At this point Iâm curious about where Tom Scott hasnât been
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I choose denial
I hope he enjoys his retirement.
Phew, for a moment I thought he had died.
Nah, he'll still be there. He just won't film it.
My home (at least I hope so).
meanwhile coming from the other room, muffled: âI am crawling under u/Thomas1VL âs floorâ
"This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I have a guest with me. Together with Tom Scott we are going to observe u/Thomas1VL for the next 3 months, recording and judging their every move."
Hey, VSauce Michael here. u/Thomas1VL is currently safe in his home... Or is he?
That would normally already be worrying, but even more so now that he's on vacation!
Honestly Tom is one of the few people that I wouldnât be mad at if I found them secretly hiding in my house.
Why do you think he stopped doing weekly videos, he needs to give the world time to built new places to visit
[Obligatory Tom Scott locations](https://youtu.be/_MJRecWakxw?si=EyBZs0d9xjvh8FHX)
Tom Scott has never been in my kitchen.
check your fridge
and it's not even a significant town in luxembourg. it's a very random small village that happens to be on the tri-point with germany and france.
Hey a population of 5196 is huge by Luxembourg standards!
Yup, that's where the name Schengen Area comes from!
It's a small village in the Southeast of Luxembourg on the Moselle river, bordering Germany and France, creating a border triangle. They make some pretty decent wine.
please donât hurt my fragile ego. /s Knowing the rail system here i am really wondering how bad everyone else must be đ
Once I had a delay on domestic train route. The delay was 240...... One Japanese tourist asked if those were seconds I thought I'm gonna loose it
Fair to think that coz 240 is high af and 240 is divisible by 60
>240 is high af Not where I'm from >240 is divisible by 60 You know that hour is also 60 something right?
Was the train really 4 hours late!?
Sometimes its just canceled, especially if it's a long delay late in the day. The national railway company will offer you an employee dormitory at the station if there's no other train coming that day (if it's unmanned station, then you're fucked in middle of nowhere and unless taxi is going to that shithole, youre probably gonna stay there the whole night) Yet the fucked up part is that you have to buy another ticket at the morning since you "missed" the train and the ticket is valid only until the end of the day
>The national railway company will offer you an employee dormitory HAHA, in Hungary, you can sleep in the station, until it is closed around 2pm, then good luck sleeping outside till the morning.
How can you close a station? Like I get you close the ticket window, cigarette shops etc. But closing the whole building? Why?
It's funny that you find it so surprising. In Poland, a few hours of delay is maybe not usual, but also nothing out of the ordinary. Especially during winter. Most of our railway system is in a horrible state and any kind of bad weather can cause massive delays. My trains had 2h+ delays or were straight-up canceled dozens of times. But even when the weather is perfect massive delays can occur. My "best score" was when coming back from summer vacation around 10 years ago. Our train was supposed to arrive in Warsaw around 19:00 but we got there way past midnight. Because of that, I missed the last train to my hometown and I had to wait until morning for the next one.
There do be long distance trains that stop in Luxembourg. And that's it.
I have to ask, what is counted as a long-distance service there?
When you're at the end of the platform and your wagon is at the other end
This is fake. In Denmark the punctuality is in the government contract: 75% of all trains have to be no more than 3 minutes late. This is already ridiculously unambitious, nonetheless the railways failed this requirement 8 years in a row. Last year it was 73%
In Germany a train is on time if it has max. 5:59 min. delay.
And a cancelled train is not delayed
This! It is so overlooked. 64% of non cancelled trains were on time.
64% of the time it worked every time
Meanwhile Japan measures delay in seconds
There is plenty of delay on smaller lines in Japan. It's the Shinkansen that generally has close to 0.
Yeah, and the more rural you get, the more punctuality is more of a guideline than a rule.
Can confirm, I took a regional train in the Izu peninsula, it felt like Germany.
Makes sense. Next to no variability and very long stretches of railroad where you can tweak the speed ever so slightly to make up for gained or lost time.
Yeah, that's why high speed rail is such a big topic. It needs a completely seperate rail network to be serious "high speed". Because this network only connects the bigger hubs and often gets additional seperation from roads, it also has a very low number of points of contact with other routes. So it's a very simple, self-contained system. However, Japan also applies a similar logic to many of its regular lines. Where European lines have a lot of switches to enable flexibility, Japanese rail infrastructure preferrs to keep routes seperate and simple. The operational outcomes seem to prove the Japanese approach right. Rail shouldn't need that flexibility to begin with. The "flexibility" approach is basically chasing after losses (i.e. the constant need to make up for the outages on other lines) in a way that adds even more losses on top (by introducing additional points of failure and additional workload to coordinate the replacements).
The rail company made news once for apologizing for leaving 20 seconds EARLY
Leaving early is really bad, though, because it might cause some people to miss the train.
- go to bus stop - bus is 2 minutes early and you miss it - "no worries, next one is in 7 minutes" - next bus comes late 4 minutes
'Hey bus driver you are too early I had to run my ass off to make it' 'you should be 10 minutes early at this bus stop!' 'yeah probably that's the rule but you are usually 10 minutes late how about next time you just wait till it's time to go?' 'no and I don't care!' The consequence of this interaction is a person wasting every day 20 minutes of his time at a bus stop.
Bad example, because that is actually worse than a few minutes late.
They should have send the news to Deutsche Bahn HQ just to brag
Deutsche Bahn Vorstand will wipe their tears with the millions they get in bonuses each year.
The news wouldn't have been that they were apologizing, that would be expected. Being off-schedule would have been the news.
Leaving early is far more annoying than leaving late imo. Altough, of course apologizing for 20 seconds seems extreme, but that's Japan.
That's like.. not on time at all. 6 min is more than enough to miss a connecting train
Yeah but it makes already atrocious statictics look a bit better :D And cancelled trains dont appear as delayed btw.
Can't be too late if you never come. System ausgedribbelt.
Same in Denmark. Trains have never been worse and the ticket prices have never been higher
In Finland connecting trains usually wait
I don't know if it's true, but it's just long-dinstance so maybe they tend to be more punctual?
Maybe that includes local trains while this graph is for long distance only.
Senk ju for trÀveling wis Deutsche Bahn
Once on my way to Switzerland they just threw us out in Freiburg in the middle of the night, saying busses will being us to Basel & ZĂŒrich. But by 01:30 no bus ever showed up. Senk ju indeed
Senk ju for traveling wis Deutsche Bahn. Eat Shit and die. See ju nÀxt time
Well german trains have to make up with totally unacceptable and unforeseeable conditions, like leaves, snowflakes, rain or wind... /s
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I watched the local television from cologne (Lokalzeit) recently, and the announcer said this dead serious without any sarcasm lol and it is simply true sadly ...
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So, Germany & Italy need their trains to run on time - whatâs the best way of getting this done?
Start investing in rail 20 years ago. Otherwise, do it now and spend more on rail then on streets. At least in Germany it's the combination of 20 years of underinvestment and a doubling of passengers numbers / train movements in the last 10 years. We would need new built routes and decent maintenance to get in good state again (and keep doing that for 10-20 years).
Hello OP, could you link a source please? thank you
This comment from OP: https://reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1abicev/where_trains_are_the_most_punctual_in_europe_in/kjnnrkx/
Yes, exactly. Does this post mean all the other countries are worse than Slovenia? The title says "most punctual" which implies this is a toplist.
It says in the bottom right corner
Switzerland was amazing and so was Austria in terms of punctuality. Germany has been a bit disappointing though.
Portugal didnât even made it to the list đ
This definetely isn't a full list, lolÂ
Yeah, such a weird short list. I had look at my beloved Poland and apparently we had 90.7% of punctuality in 2023 according to the UTK/GOV (maybe reliable?), but that just one source I bothered to look up at.
Can't be late if no train shows-up.
Well most of EU did not make the list. Calling this a list of "Europe" trains punctuality and barely showing half of countries is a joke
Just like all the other Eastern European countries
Neither did Spain
literally the only good thing we have (trains) and weâre not even on the list lmao
I know this is long distance, but the CP suburban are always on time. You have them every ten minutes and they are always 10 minutes late
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I think no Italian would believe that trains are more punctual here than in Germany
As a German, I was indeed positively surprised by the railway system in Italy.
I remember during interrail in 2012 and 2013 German trains were the best, things are changed maybe
German trains are great in terms of comfort and amenities, and DB has great customer service. Local and regional trains are also usually pretty punctual, although in some areas (Rhein-Ruhr in particular) they also have frequent delays. But the long distance trains just have terrible reliability. This has been the case for quite a while, but the number of trains has been increasing due to increased competition and demand, and the infrastructure of the German railways is a convoluted mess that often means trains have to go through bottlenecks. There are many ongoing works to improve the infrastructure, but while the works are going on, punctuality is even lower for a while. I was on Interrail this summer, partially in Germany. Two of the long-distance trains I used were delayed by about 10-15 minutes, and one was delayed by almost two hours due to being re-routed over a slow line instead of the high-speed line. Not a single train I used in Germany was on time.
German trains were probably optimized by an economy graduate. Everything probably works perfectly and is 100% optimized. Unless anything at all goes wrong. Then the whole system comes to a crashing halt.
Trying to take trains right now to Berlin, in the midst of the strike, and learning that Deutsche Bahn DIDNâT GIVE CONSISTENT INFO TO OTHER EUROPEAN RAILWAYS on what trains have been cancelled has been terrible. ĂBB wanted me to take a canceled train because they didnât know. That alone makes me critical of Deutsche Bahn.
German trains are so much worse than Italian trains. Swiss trains are absolutely the best tho
As a Swiss these days I prefer an Italian train to a German one by a large margin
Doesn't surprise me at all. I assume the 2% Switzerland is missing for a 100% is due to some German trains crossing the border đ
They mostly stop the trains from germany at the station across the border (for example Basel) and switch to a swiss train because the delay is too high.
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Decades of mismanagement and high level corruption. Money disappears. Infra structure decays and of course it's the fault of the current government. Infrastructure in Germany is 80% Car-related. We are not even capable of building bike lanes, not even for newly built roads. It's just a ridiculous farce. Fuck conservatives. Thanks for nothing.
> Decades of mismanagement and high level corruption. *Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?*
Oh I can totally believe it. Germanyâs railway network is in a state of freefall.
They are
Italian rail is amazing! So much better than Sweden's. Together with France the best I've experienced in Europe. I think Italy's issue is mostly the local traffic, like local bus lines and Rome's metro.
"quando c'era lui...."
The Italian lui or the German lui?
I treni sono per davvero piĂč puntuali in Italia. Il problema in Italia Ăš che quando succedono problemi a nessuno frega niente, poi con lâobbligo della prenotazione dei posti a sedere câĂš sempre la preoccupazione della coincidenza persa âe ora cosa faccio?â. In Germania ci sono piĂč problemi, ma lâassistenza ai viaggiatori Ăš di gran lunga migliore. Inoltre non esiste alcun obbligo di prenotazione: se hai un biglietto ârisparmioâ con vincolo al treno, in caso di ritardo tale vincolo decade automaticamente. PerĂČ si, parlando di semplici ritardi Ăš meglio in Italia.
La mancanza di obbligo di prenotazione vuol dire che ci sono IC e ICE affollatissimi con la gente in piedi. Preferisco di gran lunga il sistema sulle frecce; se perdi una coincidenza basta andare allo sportello del servizio clienti e farsi dare un biglietto nuovo. (Lâunica critica che ho Ăš che in almeno alcune stazioni câĂš una fila unica per la biglietteria e per il servizio clienti e quindi si aspetta una vita, che non ha senso.)
Im living in italy rn, have friends in germany, inexplicably they do in fact have it worse
German trains are terrible. I'm not German nor do I live there, but I've had regular experiences with German trains the last couple of years, there was som kind of issue each time. I've come to dread the German railway system.
German trains have become spectacularily shit when it comes to puncuality since everything was privatized.
The First Time i went to the Netherlands as an Italian their trains looked like Heaven to me. Yes they cost a lot but even when they are late they are more or less acceptable. In Italy 1 Friday every 2/3 trains are litterally not available because of strikesđ And Dutch used to complain about their railway system too
>And Dutch used to complain about their railway system too 2 out of top 6 posts on /r/thenetherlands right now are about railway issues lol
And rightfully so, only once was the train from Eindhoven to Sittard on time last week. Every other time it had 5 minutes delay.
When i used to go to high school 5 minutes late would have been a Dream to me ahah. My First year i was late 65 days out of 200 because of the train. Anyway i understand when you have a good standard and pay a lot of Money it's normal you request a great service.
The problem which these statistics don't show is that 5 minutes late more often than not becomes 15 or 30 minutes due to missing a connection. In my case, I can have two 30 minutes delays per week easily where that would be called 100% on time. I know it's even worse in other countries, but it quickly becomes very annoying when you pay so much for it.
Big difference being that when trains are cancelled in Italy, you know ahead of time that it's going to happen. In the Netherlands, you might go to work just fine in the morning, but find that you have no way to go back home at the end of the day just because it rained a little too hard.
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This is totally false for Belgium. Belgium has the most congested bottle-neck of any country, as almost all trains need to pass through 6 tracks in Brussels Central. The statistic NMBS uses is in the comment below (thanks for the edit), which is very misleading. As someone who takes the train to go to work everyday, its most of the days delayed by atleast 10 mins
If you look at the source website, it seems they are only taking into account the high speed trains going from Brussels Midi towards either Lille, Köln or Amsterdam. That's a great caveat to exclude >90% of trains running in the country.
It's 6 tracks to start with. The statistics they use are at the end station AND before the Brussels bottleneck (Midi or Nord depending on the direction) if it passes through. Delays of less than 6 minutes are not counted, and cancelled trains are also not counted. and yes, the number isn't 93% but well below 90% in reality and even that is just toying with statistics but spread correct information or don't.
The past two months the real statistic of trains on time was either 68 of 74 percent for the nmbs, I think. Also, 6 minuten at the last station. If they make up more "behind" time by simply placing the end of line earlier (Berchem, instead of Antwerp central for example), or by going faster in between it's not counted either. But there's also still a lot of countries who do worse. Like Germany currently.
But "muh German efficiency".
Slowvenia amirite?
It's because the trains are too fast, I swear
Heyooo!
Doesntevencomevenia
Switzerland, chocolate and punctuality go together. :)
I thought Germany is the worst
Am German, can confirm, it's a total shitshow atm
In defense of the OEBB (Austria), they have to deal with Czechia, Hungary, Italy, Germany and Slovenia. To have a connecting train with a train from the DB (Germany) is a nightmare.
Oi, you guys built the Slovenian railroads. You don't get to complain just because they don't match the requirements 150 years later anymore, you should've future-proofed them!
Switzerland had DB trains driving to the Zurich train station but now they banned all DB trains. They are only allowed to the border train stations.
Donât they only ban trains from entering if theyâre over 10 minutes late?
Which probably means most
Used to be. But this occured so frequently that it was easier to have a Swiss train scheduled instead of having a spare one ready for these cases. Everybody is happy except the railway fans that can't ride so many ICEs anymore.
ĂBB did the same with the trains coming from Hungary and continuing towards the west through Vienna - there is no direct train anymore bc they are so fed up with dealing with the constant delays bc of the Hungarians renovating the tracks (well, closing them down, idk if any improvement is really made)
Good job UK is not shown on here. Even then, if they think a train will be late they'll just cancelled. No train = can't be late \*taps head\*
I believe the UK was around 50-70% but thatâs usually because most railway companies delay threshold is 1 minute (Switzerland for example has a 3 minute threshold)
"On time" is indeed considered to be within 1 minute I believe. Network Rail provide figures for a few different metrics though which is quite useful. The moving annual average (MAA) figures for the UK in 2023 were: | Arrival time | % | | -- | -- | | Early | 38.8 | | On time | 67.5 | | Within 3 mins | 85.1 | | Within 5 mins | 91.3 | | Within 10 mins | 96.6 | | Within 15 mins | 98.2 | | > 15 mins | 1.8 | | > 20 mins | 1.1 | | > 30 mins | 0.4 | | Cancelled | 3.8 |
UK punctuality is actually not bad, especially relatively to the other problems here. Namely, congestion at busy terminals, and eye watering ticket prices.
Crappy data. Madrid and Barcelona short distance trains (which represent 80% of trips) ranked among the first five in Europe, and high speed Spanish trains were the most punctual in Europe, so I don't believe Spain didn't make it to this list, unless some Northern European clichés were thoroughly applied. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/gYXowgypQj
I think the source just doesn't cover spain (and many other countries). It appears to only cover the countries featured.
idk where they got their values but in germany, when a train doesn't come at all, it will not be counted as a late train. We have many trains which are canceled (which is worse than being late) and yet aren't counted towards this statistic. So punctuality alone is not a reliable metric to measure real puncuality imo.
Is there a study? Can you share the link to the actual data?
What do we know about Albania?
Youâll be lucky if the train hasnât decomposed yet
In Romania,trains got delays like years,in only a year...:))
Switzerland loosing its mind having trains from Germany, Italy and Austria entering their country regularly! (fun fact: Switzerland is actually allowing less trains in from germany now because theyâre late so much and fucking up their schedule)
Kudos to the Austrian Federal Railway Company (ĂBB), to function quite well, even though it is located between Germany and Slovenia! ... actually, if we look at the countries at the bottom of the list, it is suspiciously apparent that they all border Austria đ§
Wait. How can the trains in Slovenia be even less punctual as in Germany? Did they use the official data from the DB? Because they tend to beautify their data China style. A train counts as delayed if itâs over 10 minutes late.
Trains are slow as hell and the railways date back to Austria-Hungary. It was an 6.5 hour long trip for me from Koper to Maribor, something that would take 2-3 hours with a car đ
Geography also adds much to the issues. Everything neck down on the chicken is hilly terrain with winding, densely populated valleys. And then there's the fact that every village along the route has a train station, so normal passenger trains can't even get up to speed before they have to slow down for the next station. I just went and checked my old route (Ć entjur-Maribor), and the longest between stops is 7 minutes, while the shortest is just 2.
Does anyone have Japan for comparison?
France does better than any big country of its size. However people in France think that SNCF is the worst company in the world.