Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.
They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.
And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?
I thought it cute when I believed you were comparing bus service, but laughed out loud at “america’s rails”
DB is the definite proof that German efficiency is a lie, but tourists using urban transports in big cities will usually have a good experience. Even the public transports in Berlin have got their shit together in the last few years, even if S-Bahn/DB are still a level below BVG.
Where I live, there are literally zero public transit options. There are a few bus stops closer to the downtown area, but honestly I have never actually seen the buses that supposedly go there. Usually there are just homeless people hanging out at the bus stops. We do have a small Amtrak station, which is nice, I guess, but it’s way more expensive than driving and takes 4-10 times as long to get anywhere. Then when you get somewhere, you have to figure out how to rent a car. And this is the largest city in my state; most places don’t even have well-paved roads, much less public transit.
Threadbare. In cities like NYC, it approximates European transport, though is somewhat more dysfunctional. Elsewhere, you have things like “commuter rail” (like a regio/S-bahn, only with next to no off-peak service, running solely as a shuttle between CBDs and dormitory suburbs). There’s Amtrak, but it’s slow and infrequent and runs on tracks owned by freight railroads, and often is delayed by hours from waiting for freight trains to pass. Bus services have a stigma, associating them with poor (and typically non-white) people, to the point where people who have a choice avoid them, and vote to minimise the amount of their tax money that goes to pay for them. And in some Republican states, the government has scrapped even buses, replacing them with Uber vouchers mailed to households.
So yes, DB is creaking and needs investment to bring it up to scratch, but its service levels (even when wracked by delays) are utopian compared to most of the US.
DB needs to stop to pretend to be a global player and buy fricking bus lines in England and other places that are just a waste of money. If you can’t operate without accumulating debt then maybe you shouldn’t fucking be doing that. They fucked up a working system for profit and made it worse for everyone.
United States has rails?
Here’s a fun comparison: Tennessee vs Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania
They have very similar population density (70/km² vs 65/km²). Tennessee is roughly 4x the area and population.
There are only 2 inter-city train stops in Tennessee, in Memphis and a small town to it’s north, both on the 1x/day service between Chicago and New Orleans. The largest city (and its state capitol) Nashville has no rail service.
The entire state of Tennessee has only 10 inter-city bus stops. Ten! Serving 7M people. The 4th largest city in the state is Chattanooga (181k), and it has no inter-city bus and no rail.
I’m 30 years old and have taken a bus once in my entire life. Not because it sucks but because it’s simply nonexistent. I’d have to drive 30 minutes just to get to the place that had the public transport and at that point I might as well just drive all the way there. And I don’t even think the US has any trains that go between cities anymore except for commercial trains. I literally live next to a train track and it’s all cargo trains. I’ve never seen a passenger car on a train in my entire life. Could just be where I live, but I’ve driven from coast to coast and the only trains are cargo trains.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is surprisingly historically accurate if you ignore all the cartoons
If the 'toons represent the working class, then ignoring them is very appropos of what the politicians do.
Smh, we’re still doing toon erasure in 2025?
Public transportation in cities varies. But inter-city transportation? In most of the USA you simply cannot travel between towns or cities on public transportation. There are a few inter-city bus options (Greyhound, Flix, Megabus), but those don’t go everywhere.
The rail options outside of the NE corridor (Boston to Washington DC, basically) are very sparse. Here’s the map: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/Maps/Amtrak-System-Map-020923.pdf
That’s it. Most of those routes are at most once per day in each direction. So if you city even has a stop (which it probably doesn’t) the train may only come through in the middle of the night. Some routes are only 3x/week. And because of the massive distances involved and old equipment, it takes at least 70h+ to travel from coast to coast (more really, since connection times are long) and costs twice the price of a 6h flight ($250+ vs $80-120).
Trains are often on schedule, but can be many hours late. Once they are off schedule they are at the mercy of the freight train lines (who own the tracks) for passing. You can get stuck behind a slow moving cargo train for many hours.
Why is it like this? It’s complicated. But it starts with very low population density, large areas/distances, and a very different relationship between the individual and the state in the US vs most of Europe. Add the rise of suburbs in the automobile right when many US cities were growing. Another factor is public attitudes. People think that public transportation is for poor people. I know people who have never ridden a city bus, and I live in a city that probably has above average public transportation for the region.
Anyway, as a public transportation rider-by-choice I feel your pain. Having spent a few weeks in Germany recently (with a DT for travel), and having ridden extensively on US train and bus networks, yous is definitely much, much better. Resist the politics of privatization and decay.
Resist the politics of privatization and decay.
Too late. Railways have been converted to a public-private partnership in the 90s, and are trying to get broken up into a competitive market these days anyway, and local public transportation is also run by public-private companies. In the countryside, it’s usually managed by a private company in the first place, often organized in local organizations of several firms that offer the same fares - which usually has hard borders and can for example lead to villages next to each other having a 5 h connection time through railways, which don’t follow these area bounds.
I live in an area know for having some of the better public transport in the states. My drive to work is about 25 minutes. I can bus to work, but it takes almost three hours and three separate busses, and then I cannot bus home after work.
I live in an area that also has decent bus coverage with stops all over, although I’ve never actually taken the bus. I can’t take the bus to work because there aren’t stops where I need to go. I also attend school 19 miles away, and depending on traffic it’s anywhere from a 30-45 minute drive. Last year my car broke down and I looked into taking the bus to school for the few weeks I would be carless. It would have been a 5 1/2 hour trip each way, I would have had to take 3 or 4 buses, transfer between 2 different companies, and I would have had to walk several miles in between stops to get from the first bus company’s stop to the second’s. Realistically, I couldn’t have even left on time to make it to class or gotten back home while the buses were still running, even if I wanted to waste my life riding buses. I worked an extra 100 hours of OT that month to pay for my rental car.
American public transport either doesn’t exist or is considered to only be for poor people and migrant workers [sic].
The only place this isn’t true is in a big city.
In the US transit mostly doesn’t exist beyond buses that barely ever run.
I am lucky enough to live along the rail line that connects the east coast to Chicago. It is the main connection between population centers. There are only 2 train lines that pass through, each line only has one train in both directions. (total 4 a day, 2 east, 2 west) No service during the day, only early morning and late night.
Rail service is a joke here.
Our buses are more of a suggestion even if they go to where you want.
My city has two trains per day: one each way. They leave at 1am and 2am. The US train system is hilariously bad.
I know that DB in Germany is horrible compared to the rest of Europe, but at least it has trains that run during daylight hours!
Only large, northeastern, US cities have anything resembling real public transportation.
I live around the Twin Cities metro of Minnesota (two cities split by a river), which installed its first passenger light rail about 20 years ago. I recently moved from the north suburbs to the south side of town. I was very excited to be able to drive 10 minutes east on the freeway to my buddy’s house within walking distance of a station to take the 10 minute light rail ride downtown for a basketball game. Previously I would have driven 20-40 minutes (depending on traffic congestion) to pay $20 to use a parking ramp because the light rail doesn’t extend north.
Over the last 20 years they have extended the rail between the airport/Mall of America on the south side to the downtown of one city, and connected that downtown to the downtown of the other city across the river. If you live anywhere north of the city proper, or more than a few miles away from the one line running south, there is little reason to use the rail system over driving the whole way. If you do though, it’s pretty great.
That’s just been my experience, my understanding is some larger cities (Chicago and NYC are what come to mind) have more robust rail systems, but many cities (mine at least) have limited access for most people living in them.
