Before starting my record attempt between Kemijärvi, Finland and Lagos, Portugal, people told me over and over it would break down in Germany. So much so that I even tried to re-but (pre-but?) some of the likely critique.
Now, having made the trip, and none of the total
That is the point. There are commuters, because the rail service is not like this:
I guess they are on time though, which makes that so much better than DB.
Hmmh. I mean first of all it’s super annoying if it’s the second day in a week you get home an hour late. But also on the way to work, you have to be one of the lucky few with very flexible work time and it doesn’t matter at all if you come in at 7 or 9:30. Otherwise you have to waste many hours each month to start earlier so the boss doesn’t fire you. Bonus points for a combination, like you came in late, that means you have to work till the evening, and then the train home is cancelled as well.
And we just finished most of the construction work during summer holidays which made several people take detours for a few weeks. Which was scheduled maintenance in addition to the occasional thing breaking. It’s not great at all. And we kinda need good infrastructure. I already took the bus for a while. Punctuality is okay-ish, I guess. But there’s not nearly enough of them to replace the trains. I mean it used to be a train with more than a thousand people in it. And now it’s two busses which can accommodate 150 people each. That just doesn’t work during rush hour. Unless half of the people switch to their car instead. Which I guess is what we do.