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The punctuality of trains in Europe
(lemmy.wtf)
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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What's funny to me is that the Dutch people I know complain about their trains as much as the Germans I know.
People really underappreciate trains in the Netherlands. Not only are they relatively punctual (even in a worldwide ranking), but having that in addition to having a dense schedule is really pretty impressive. In that sense, only Japan truly has us beat, I think.
I think the Swiss beat you aswell. They run a rather dense network too. Not dense like NL in the urban sense of the word, but Swiss connections are very well frequented and they run through some quite difficult terrain adding to the difficulty of running it all smoothly. The Swiss and Dutch network has quite some resemblance actually in how it is ran, both more perceived as a transfer model with rather easy to read, logical timetables ("runs every half hour": 13u00 13u30 14u00 etc), both barely having any real high speed lines.
From having travelled with trains in Europe, i'ld intuitively say in Europe Swiss wins, followed by the Netherlands and then perhaps the Austrians or the French. Belgium up there is this ranking is just lies and deceipt, in my experience the Germans the Belgians are about as reliable (not), but the germans do still win from Belgium because they are (often but not always) more fair in the communication and they hand out "request a refund"-forms in delayed trains.
The Swiss network is amazing as well, and I was considering mentioning them too. It really is quite a feat to have it run that well given the terrain, but given that the busiest routes in the Netherlands have trains running every ten minutes, I leaned to limiting it to Japan - but can definitely live with Switzerland at #2 as well.
(I've also had more delays than I like in Germany, and more often than not on those delays I've not been handed those forms, in which case it wasn't clear how to request a refund :/ )
Slow reply but it might still be worth it. It got easy to request the refund if you've booked in their DB Navigator app, then it's just: open the trip, go to tab "ticket" (where qr code is), scroll all the way to the bottom for "more actions" and select "submit compensation request". No paper form required! Quite the feat for a German bureaucratic company!
Oh thanks! Unfortunately these were anecdotes from a while ago, so nothing much I can do now. Generally, though, I tend to have a printed ticket that I received via email, not in an app. It's possible that there's now a procedure you can find out about via their website - I just wasn't able to back then. (Or possibly I did manage in the end, but it was just a lot of digging - not sure.)
I fucking love your OV. In Germany it's shit (especially in Schleswig-Holstein). I'm super jealous.
From my experience, their problems are just of a different nature. Dutch trains are punctual, but the carriages are often in a filthy state.
Nah bruv, i don't think so
You don't think what, that Dutch trains are punctual or that they're lacking in cleanliness? You can find plenty of sources about the latter, so you don't have to take my word for it... bruv
First one still gives 5.8 in regards to cleanliness and that is from a Dutch perspective not from a European perspective. Second one is reddit (!) and is mainly talking about the outside of the trains, which I don't think matters as much for the commuting experience ๐. I think "filthy" is absolutely an overstatement. I mainly ride around den Hague and Rotterdam, but have taken plenty of trains in other directions. Compared to Germany in which i have traveled plenty by all types of trains and compared to what i saw while interrailing i deem the Dutch trains to be pretty clean (at least on the inside)
Our experiences differ then. And the Dutch perspective is the whole point, as the comment I responded to wondered why Dutch people are complaining.
Ok, but the comment was about how it is funny that the Dutch complain as much as the Germans although their trains are better. So it was about a lack of broader perspective on that issue. So yes the whole point was about the Dutch perspective, but about the fact that their perspective seems to be warped from a european perspective.
So the conclusion i would draw from our interaction is that what a Dutch person experiences as filthy seems to me wildly more clean than what could be considered filthy in a European context. Good on you to be able to have high standards, hope the rest of European rail will strive to get to that high level.
But that's just like, my opinion bruv. Maybe I should have stated that more clearly