Literally happened to me yesterday on the way back to Berlin. I arrived 2 hours late. In fairness there was what was labelled "a personal accident" on the track, which is a euphemism for somebody jumping in front of a train. Which unfortunately happens and needs to be dealt with properly and is not really something anybody can do much about.
But delays are fairly common on that particular route (Berlin-Amsterdam). They use really old trains and they break down once in a while. Or the track is down for maintenance. Or whatever. Most of my journeys in the last three years there's always something. Before that it was more reliable.
Learn the lesson from the UK, who did privatisation first* and have witnessed things much worse than the current state of German trains (which are still *excellent* in comparison, and I say that as one who moved from the UK to Germany in 2018).
* or "harder", to the extent that German rail privatisation never went as far as in the UK. I understand there's a constitutional requirement here in Germany for government majority ownership of the rail system — I wish it were so in the UK
Yes, I find it difficult to understand why anyone old enough to remember what British Rail actually was (or capable of e.g. reading Wikipedia, to find out what it was), would like British Rail to be resurrected in anything like the form it had. It feels like pointless nostalgia most of the time; double arrows, rail blue, and jumpers for goalposts.
And like, if one's model for maintaining a system depends on having a sensible government in power, _regardless of which particular political party you think is least competent_ you are going to have a rail system being run incompetently at least half the time. That's also what we got with "privatisation", of course; why would we expect any different?
British rail was a joke before privatisation. Now the complaint is mainly around the cost of popular trains, and the performance of state run franchises like northern
Shortly after privatisation, the Conservatives who did it lost power; it was going "so well" that the Conservatives' own choice of advertising posters in 2001 included "You paid the tax so where are the trains?"*, an irony I remember well because I was into writing letters to the newspaper editor at the time and my letter about it was published.
The main joke (there have been many smaller ones) for the last ~ decade has been the Brighton-London route, and two decades ago my trains home from Aberystwyth were getting cancelled every time a few stops before the Birmingham, with people saying that was to avoid getting counted as late.
In the U.K. it’s grey, you can choose a service from London to Manchester that’s far faster than pre privatisation for a reasonable off peak fee, or you can choose a slower service with a change at crewe which costs far less than under British Rail and take about the same time (3h30)
Under nationalisation plans were afoot to close Marylebone, today Chiltern is one of the highest rated services going
DB is just an embarrassment. Yesterday, my direct train from Basel to Berlin was cancelled. I had to take a bus to the other station in Basel, take another train to Frankfurt, miss my connection there and take another one to Berlin - all the while, my seat reservation was of course obsolete and everything was packed full of people with luggage, even in the 1st class.
Sure, you get a little bit of money back, but at that point, I understand why so many people prefer to fly or go by car.
There are things that can be done about people jumping in front of trains. Making sure the rails are not accessible with fences around them. Putting camera's at spots where people can get past the fences. In high risk stations you can put walls and gates in that only open when a train can be boarded.
It's all just a lack of investment. If the budget for rail and other infrastructure matched the budget for car infrastructure rail would be way better than cars.
Coming from someone who has spent considerable time thinking about and planning suicide by train: lol no
Unless you put up walls higher than the highest ladders available (so at least 5m I guess) or completely enlose every train track with a roof and everything, people will climb over things. There's either no space for large fenced areas around tracks (pretty much everywhere near civilization) or you're too far out for somebody to respond before a determined person can reach the track. And of course, nobody will permit the construction of the necessary infrastructure (call them NIMBYs if you want).
Every escape door can be used to enter tracks. Make them as secure as you want them - keys are easier to get then you think.
Rebuilding train stations to completely secure access to the tracks would involve standardizing all trains in every country in all of Europe.
And (not applicable for high-speed trains) unless you want to spend billions and years to rebuild every train crossing to bridges, it will be impossible to completely secure the tracks.
Most train suicides are impulsive decisions and can be prevented with better infrastructure. But if suicide by train is too difficult, I'll just jump on front of a car instead, or from a bridge, etc. "It's all just a lack of investment" so is terra forming Mars. But spend a fraction of this for better mental health and you can prevent many more suicides.
(Without derailing the topic, I hope you are doing better now! You sound level headed and like someone we want in this world or on our jobs or in our friend groups.)
I mostly figured the same as what you said (way too much infrastructure needed to mostly eliminate the possibility), though if you say most suicides are impulse decisions, wouldn't preventative infrastructure in a few key spots be sufficient to shave, idk, 10+% off the number of suicides by train?
Even if it did prevent 10% of suicides by train, it stands to reason that a huge portion of those 10% would simply become suicides by jumping off a bridge.
Studies show that making particular suicide methods harder to access is an effective way to reduce overall suicide rates. That includes restrictions on poisons and firearms, but also physical barriers on bridges and train platforms.
> In high risk stations you can put walls and gates in that only open when a train can be boarded.
That is only possible with fully standardized train units. Which is why you will see this in subways and dedicated high speed networks, but not on the common rail net. Platforms on a larger railway station have to accommodate a range of trains, from metro services (many doors at shorter intervals), to intercity trains (fewer doors, longer carriages), to special trains like night trains (a bunch of carriages from different ages strung together) and rented locomotives with spare carriages to fill gaps in the roster caused by late delivery of new trains.
> Making sure the rails are not accessible with fences around them.
There will always be spots where the rails are somewhat accessible outside of built-up areas.
Besides, all of that is fighting symptoms. Spend the same money on prevention and you'll have much more impact.
Makes sense why I've not seen gates in many places but metro networks and high speed.
I agree that there will always be spots where the rails can be reached. As with many parts of human behavior, if there is more friction less people will do the thing. Since there are many instances where this is a temporary state and seeking and finding help can always be difficult I think creating that frictions is also worthwhile. Making sure people are prevented from feeling suicidal and being happier is something I also fully support.
> "a personal accident" on the track, which is a euphemism for somebody jumping in front of a train
Removing a body from the track shouldn't take long, of course. The problem is if you need to do detailed forensics because it might have been a murder. At least, I am guessing that's the reason that sometimes a line stays closed for a long time with a lot of police vehicles parked in the vicinity (here in England), whereas on other occasions there is a death but only a few trains are delayed and for only 10-30 minutes.
Interestingly, I have on at least one occasion heard about trains being held up because of a dead body on the track that wasn't hit by a train. That definitely sounds suspicious. But of course no further information is given to the general public. (Body placed by criminals but reported before it was hit or the train happened to be slow enough to stop in time? Or suicidal person drugs themselves before placing themselves on the track?)
> not really something anybody can do much about
Good video surveillance might help eliminate the need for a detailed investigation of the (perhaps) crime scene. But, yes, not an easy problem.
10 to 30 minutes isn't nearly enough time. In my country, when someone is hit by a train, that train is stopped on track and is only allowed to continue after it is fully cleaned up. The train company can't risk rolling into a crowded station when the front of the train still shows evidence of an impact such as having blood on it.
Sometimes the front locomitive gets uncoupled earlier so the train can continue on a different track. But the rule is that passengers in the train should not be exposed to what happened outside the train. It's bad enough that the machinist had to witness it.
In addition to the sibling comment, it is also generally a requirement that the crew is changed before the train can continue, which also takes a while.
As an aside, I was once on a train that hit a deer-sized animal while going through a cutout, which caused the now dead animal to bounce back and hit the side of the train. The first car had blood smeared all over. When we rolled into the next station, there was a collective dropping of jaws among the people waiting to board. Yes, there was an announcement once they had boarded that it wasn’t a person.
In France you can go very far (Paris <=> Barcelona, 1000km in 6h47, Lille <=> Barcelona 150km in 8h32), but only in the 30 biggest cities, and going from/to Paris. If you take two random points in the map (or even population), you'll likely not be able to do that route in a reasonable amount of time.
Huh really? Whenever I’ve taken the train in Germany it’s been pretty punctual, and looking at the board that’s been the case for most trains. But maybe I just got lucky and/or it’s changed over time.
Flakiest trains I’ve experienced anywhere in Europe were in Italy - rolling strikes among train workers are crazy frequent and cause so many delays and cancellations.
The map claims a journey from Berlin to Bremen takes 2h57m. My last one took 6h 33m. And it was only a single connection in Hamburg. The Berlin-Hamburg ICE got stuck for a few hours in the middle of nowhere, then a few trains from Hamburg to Bremen got cancelled... The usual stuff.
I've heard so. I think my first DB train was around 2019, it was another ICE from Berlin to Munich. They've changed the train, cancelled all seat reservations as a consequence, delayed it for a few hours, I missed my connection in Munich... Maybe I'm unlucky :) E.g. I'm quite lucky with London trains (never had a cancellation/significant delay), but I've heard Cambridge residents would love to have a word with me.
