this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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As a European I have to say, you are very optimistic about our train schedules.
Not to downplay any of the myriad problems here in the USA, but I think many of us are trying to believe that a better world is possible and this sometimes leads to unrealistic views of how much better things are abroad. Sometimes.
But I am hopeful that this country is increasingly humiliated for at least a couple of decades.
The blind hope that somewhere in this world there is a functioning public transit system is all that keep me going some days. Let me have this
Honestly, the perspective of what constitutes a functioning public transit system depends a lot on what you have as a point of reference.
I'm portuguese but I lived in Germany for 5 months during which I used exclusively public transports and bikes. Central Europeans complain a lot about Deutsche Bahn and indeed during this time I saw a few strikes, delays and suppressions. However, transports were still much more reliable and much more frequent than I'm used too so I could never really consider it problematic, although my Central European friends complained a lot.
Tokyo I've heard. For sure not Europe. Halve of the scheduled trains didn't run today in Belgium.
Switzerland is pretty good at well with trains.
I heard they are so good that they point it out in announcements when a delay was caused by foreign trains (Looking at you Deutsche Bahn)
Haha, DB also does this with foreign delays. I've been in a German train starting in Amsterdam that left 5 mins late - they mentioned it at every stop until Munich.
They were just happy it wasn't them for once.
A swiss train operator excused the 30 sec delay
The german trains measure delays in 5 minutes intervals, everything under 5 minutes in punctual.
And if a train is canceled, it doesn't go into the delayed train statistics as delayed.
https://media.tenor.com/qRq6uenJInkAAAAM/think-smart-meme.gif
Oh true, I forgot that. Nice little talk by David Kriesel on that topic: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit_ist_eine_zier
That's still more trains than in the US
It's a problem of reliability. If you need to be at work at 08:00 and your train is regularly late or getting cancelled, you can't take the train to work.
Not to mention even a small delay could mess up the timing of taking the next bus/train. For not too busy routes it could mean waiting in the cold for half an hour.... If that next bus has a good delay you could be there for almost an hour. (Totally not speaking from personal experience)
When I lived in New York there was a place I’d go sometimes that required 2 trains and a bus. On the weekdays it took about 40 minutes, but on weekends with the cumulative effect of less frequent service it was typically 2 hours, or longer depending on how quickly the first train came.
To be fair they're striking because checks notes their special treatment is ending.
Only half were cancelled? Man, that sounds nice.
"Halve" isn't a word.
Multilingual Belgian makes a mistake in English. I think we can give them a pass on this one.
To "halve" something is a real thing. But I think the word wasn't used exactly right here..
I take the light rail into work from the suburbs of Seattle into downtown. Trains run every 7-8 minutes. They're expanding it in all directions now. Only downside is that a lot of homeless ride the train because it's cold as heck on the streets. That's a societal problem though, not an issue with the train.
Japan is the MVP here. I live there and I literally have never seen a train not arrive exactly at the scheduled time. However "public" transport is privately owned so... Uh... Yeah, tradeoffs.
Given that it works so well, what are the negatives due to being private? Is it expensive to ride?
Yeah. It also stops running at around 11 or 12 so if you stay out late you just might find you can't get back home.
That's fine, just get drunk and sleep on the street.
Must pe nice. Here I was about to add that you can’t take a train to work if you might have to stay a bit late, but trains outside rush hour are one hour, then two hours apart, and stop way too early
Ukraine wasn't completely horrible... before 2022 :(
I've been in Vienna from time to time, and it's pretty good, 365€/year for the pass that gets you buses, trams and subways with unlimited access and no turnstiles anywhere, you just go and enter
Schedules follow work hours and go from a subway every 2 minutes during peak hours to one every 15mins late at night
You have night line buses for weekdays and on Saturday night public transport doesn't shut down
Coverage is good, you almost always have a bus or tram line less then 5 minutes of walking
There are bike sharing places with 20 bikes each ~1km apart and they cost 60 cents for half an hour, or e-scooters in the designed locations which are basically everywhere (but being owned by companies they cost so much more then everything else)
If you're German, RIP in peace.
A German intern came to our american city and was flabbergasted that the trains here ran consistently.
I had a laugh since I always assumed it'd be the opposite.
I think watching Jet Lag let's you see the full breadth of transit systems pretty well, because the whole game relies on it. Japan is amazing. A lot of Europe is good enough that you can get around, some great and some not so great. The US is so bad I don't think either team bothered taking a train when they did the show there.
It's funny (and accurate) that they keep getting fucked over by Deutsche Bahn.
As an American, this is exactly correct. The last time I tried to take Amtrak the train literally did not show up and they told us they had no way to contact it and didn't know where it was. After waiting many hours with no change in status I finally gave up. The last time I actually rode Amtrak it was multiple hours late and cost about the same as a plane ticket.
But, I bet the train didn't fall apart in air, and didn't crash because of overwhelmed ATC
Like, you lost the train? Did you look under the couch?
Peak moments of MÁV (Hungarian State Railways)
I hear Italian trains are very timely?
Especially regionale ones used by people to commute for work
As an American, I would say the same...except about the American train schedules.