I’m lucky that I can work from home four days a week. This is important because my office is almost 400km away from where I live near Frankfurt am Main - in Zurich. But one day a week, the team meets up, and I’m part of it. The drive isn’t much fun, though, as the travel time is just wasted.
But there are alternatives. The plane takes only 50 minutes, plus 20 minutes of local transport to/from the airport. So I could be there in about 1.5 hours. Not great for the environment, and not great for the wallet either. A round trip flight costs about €350 - €400. And according to Google, I produce 46kg of CO2 each way. Deutsche Bahn, thanks in part to my Bahncard 25 discount, is significantly cheaper, though not cheap. At 18kg of CO2 according to Google, it’s also much more environmentally friendly.
Alright, at the end of 2022, the connection to Zurich looked better. But by now, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) has had enough and kicked Deutsche Bahn out of its clock-face schedule. This means some good connections are gone, for example, the hourly direct connection from Hamburg to Zurich via Frankfurt. Sucks for me, I now have to take an IC from Amsterdam, leaving at 4:00 AM at the latest. Then I’d be in Zurich shortly after 8:00 AM.
You probably noticed the subjunctive. So far, I’ve made thirteen trips. Seven to Zurich, six back to Frankfurt. I’m sitting on the train right now, hence the imbalance. The delayed train, just like ten others before it. Eleven out of thirteen journeys were delayed, and not just by five minutes. On a major European route. That’s why I usually take an earlier train at 2:45 AM, so I have enough of a buffer to get to the office somewhat on time.
Until last year, there was still an ICE from Hamburg to Zurich that I could have taken after 4:00 AM for a direct journey. But that’s been gone since 2023. I now know the reason why. The SBB in Switzerland has had a clock-face schedule for a few years now. But such a schedule only works if everyone sticks to their time slot. Sticking to a schedule, however, is not Deutsche Bahn’s strong suit, and so the SBB kicked them out of the system. Entry into Switzerland is now only allowed when there’s a gap. Of course, you can’t plan an ICE train that way, and so the connection is gone.
And then I look at the Swiss Federal Railways. Delays? Never had one so far. Instead, connections are numerous and regular. Sure, Switzerland is smaller, but they also invest a lot of money in their railways. In Germany, the money flows somewhere, but apart from a few flagship projects, nothing happens. The rail network is dilapidated, the control systems are dilapidated, the trains are disgusting, and the capacity is too low - for both passengers and heavy freight. But instead of doing something, the state’s hands are tied: in a stock corporation, the owners have no say. By privatizing it into a corporation, we’ve given up any right to have a say.
Personally, I wonder what the management has been doing for the last 20 years. The railway has gotten progressively worse; now 35% of long-distance trains are at least 6 minutes late, and 20% are at least 15 minutes late. And even when the train runs on schedule, it runs on schedule more slowly over the dilapidated tracks. A large part of the infrastructure dates back to the beginning of the last century. It’s a testament to the failure of Deutsche Bahn, but also of German politics across all parties. Since the year 2000, all major parties have been part of the government, and they’ve all done just one thing: nothing.