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.
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)
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.
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.
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)
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.
As a European I have to say, you are very optimistic about our train schedules.
I hear Italian trains are very timely?
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
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.
Tokyo I’ve heard. For sure not Europe. Halve of the scheduled trains didn’t run today in Belgium.
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)
Switzerland is pretty good at well with trains.
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
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.
“Halve” isn’t a word.
Ukraine wasn’t completely horrible… before 2022 :(
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.
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)
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.
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.
Peak moments of MÁV (Hungarian State Railways)