Deutsche Bahn. A massive public transit networked, owned by the titans of private industry. You can get anywhere in Germany from anywhere else in Germany with it. Truly a marvel of modern… yeah fuck this, Deutsche Bahn is a fucking nightmarish shitshow.
This is now the third time in a row that me or someone visiting me has been forced to take a fucking taxi because their train was late or canceled abruptly. As in, I have had three cases in the last few months where someone had to make a connection to catch a bus or a flight using Deutsche Bahn, and in ALL THREE CASES we ended up needing to take an exceedingly pricy taxi ride, because the damn train was late or canceled. They are effectively a monopoly within Germany (because who else is going to lay down fucking train lines) which was privatized because… fuck, I have no idea. But the reliability has gone down and the prices have gone up ever since then. And this is the third time I’m spending upwards of 50 bucks on a goddamn taxi because the trains cannot be relied on!
I seriously need to get that driver’s license. I’m essentially stuck relying on something which is just completely and utterly unreliable.
I’m sorry your travel experience is both annoying and inconvenient.
But being in the UK, this is like living in a cardboard box in middle o’ road and having to listen to someone complain that the towels aren’t fluffy enough from their suite at Claridge’s.
O-ho! You have a box! We dreamed of having a box. We had a dip in the road and were glad! We slept in puddles and covered ourselves with rocks. A box! Well, looks who’s all fancy.
(I mean, seriously - trains and public transportation - that’s just crazy talk right there.)
See, the thing is… it kinda is. Like 3/3 late/canceled might not be, but there was not a single week when I was traveling through Munich for Berufsschule where I didn’t have a train canceled or severely delayed in one direction or the other. Not one week. It got the point where the school, which had a pretty strict policy on people being late, had to pretty much abandon it altogether because the trains just would not run on time. It was bad.
Oh, totally. For intercity connections, the trains are maybe 50-75% faster, and cost 3 times as much. It’s usually actually cheaper to fly than take the train halfway across Germany. The buses aren’t the fastest, but they’re a hell of a lot cheaper, and, perversely, more reliable. :mad:
As a former Mainer, I do understand that. But my towels aren’t fluffy, dammit.
I’m in Alabama, in a city with a population of 180,000 (450,000 for the whole metro area). The nearest passenger train station of any kind (commuter rail, inter-city, tram, subway, whatever) is 100 miles away. Our buses only run on weekdays from 6am to 6pm.
When was it privatized? I was in Germany in 2004; took a lot of trains and never had a problem. Only one ever started late, but it got to my destination on time.
Privatized in 1994. I suppose in 2004 there where already hotspots – hubs where they just. could. not. arrive. in. time – they were definitely there by 2008.
Then in 2010/11, during a snowy winter, it was laid bare how rotten their infrastructure is and that things are not going to change. If they had had pressure from a competitive market from the beginning, they might have kept up, but I’m afraid things have progressed too far by now.
You had roads? Why, in Alaska, we didn’t even have trails. If we wanted to visit friends, we just wandered around aimlessly until we bumped into them. The idea of “roads” was like dreaming of unicorns and fairies.
Florence King, iirc, once observed, and I paraphrase from memory, that Americans have a capacity for getting the lessons of history turned around backward and making them words to live by: If Mussolini made the trains run on time, then this is thought to mean that late is good. :mad:
But of course Mussolini didn’t make the trains run entirely on time, and Germany isn’t Italy. This is another demonstration of my thesis that privatization always lowers quality of service, no exceptions.
