I'm sorry, this is a fumbled mess of a video. Much like Germany's high speed rail systems. Thankfully, when you get to the Netherlands, it will be crystal clear and easy to understand.
I mean that we need more overtracks to reduce wasting money for four track constellations. That would be the right thing to build rail networks especially if you build switches with low degrees of curves.
The big problem, not just with high-speed rail but with rail in general, is that in the last decade, there has been no political incentive behind building new or upgrading existing infrastructure. Peter Ramsauer, Alexander Dobrindt, Andreas Scheuer, and now Volker Wissing, all of these guys were in charge of infrastructure at the federal level, and all of them prioritized building and funding new autobahn projects.
Truuuue… it has been systematical defunded for a good time now. There are now privat lobbist for rail .. on the other hand the biggest automotiv industry in the world.
Having just travelled in Germany for a month, this was a joy to watch. Before this trip (not my first to Germany), I had the impression that the train system is near-perfection. Talking to Germans (and having my own experience), people are very frustrated with the chronic late train problem. As a Canadian, it is still the dream.
I guess it's getting used to very high standards and getting frustrated when these aren't met. So for me, being a German who regularly uses the ICE, this was also a very educative watch and helped me get off my high horse
As a German with lots of train traveling experience, I can confidently say: It's not nearly as bad as some people make it seem. Sure, there's a rather high percentage of delayed trains, and that's not good. But most of the time, you reach your destination within one hour of the planned arrival time. Sure, that's not great, but if you don't plan for "I'm going to be in Munich at 09:30 because I have a meeting there at 10:00", but rather plan with a bit of buffer time, it's actually fine. Sure, it's annoying to be later than you planned, but at least in my experience, most travel isn't time critical. And besides: It's not like airplanes or even your car are always on time. Flights get delayed as well, you can get stuck in traffic with your car. Trains might get delayed more often, but it can happen with any other mode of transport just as well.
@@InterFelix Die Deutsche Bahn ist besser als ihr Ruf. Mit ein bisschen Puffer kommt man entspannter an als mit dem Auto. Außer man will zum Flughafen. Da vertraue ich aus Erfahrung (Taxifahrt von Köln zum Flughafen nachts) dem Auto. Da habe ich mein Schicksal zumindest selbst in der Hand.
@@InterFelix The more buffer you need, the less attractive/competitive it gets. Reliability is definitely an issue and it is not just an issue because Germans are demanding and like to complain.
I think a lot of the controversy around Stuttgart 21 comes from the fact that it isn't supposed to compliment the existing station, but to replace it. Replacing 16 terminus platforms with eight throughrunning platforms will get tight. The new station will be pretty much at capacity as soon as it opens. Compare that to Zürich, where they also built a huge new underground throughrunning station beneath the existing huge terminus. They did that, but just kept the terminus platforms as well, so it's a strict capacity upgrade. Some have accused Stuttgart 21 to be a real estate project, motivated not by efforts to actually improve public transit, but by the huge area of city center land that could be developed were the current tracks to be demolished.
I don’t think anybody would disagree with the statement that Stuttgart 21 is both a railway and an urban development project. The disagreement starts when asking whether is more of the former or the latter kind.
BTW, there is a fairly neutral video on Stuttgart 21 on RUclips: “The truth about Stuttgart 21 doesn’t exist.” It is in German but has author-provided English subtitles. It is close to two years old, so a few things are already outdated.
As someone who works in the industry I have to say the video is very good. Most people really miss a lot of the origins of the problems of the German network. Especially the problem that Germany can't do a star shape or something like this.
Yes, this is something I have to tell my local politicians every time they reference France or Japan when it comes to dedicated high-speed lines. Not to mention, I have to always remind them, that in Japan the entirety of the regional network is narrow-gauge and unsuited for high-speed lines.
The problem is not the layout (star shaped or grid shaped), it's the model : Germany chose to create a "serial" network (or "string of beads") where all trains have to run through every medium or large cities on long distance services, with only isolated stretches of high-speed lines in between cities. Once again, layout and model are two different things, the layout is the shape and depends on where the cities are located. But the model is the way lines are built : each line and its extensions form a continuous high-speed corridor, sometimes with long branches. France and Spain went for the "parallel" (as in electrical circuitry) or "arterial" model where trains can either run through cities to serve downtown stations or completely bypass them depending on their services (or quickly stop at out-of-center on-line full speed through stations). A TGV train from Lille (on the Belgian border of France) to Marseille on the Mediterranean coast can be entirely non-stop and stay on high-speed lines for the whole trip, accelerating out of Lille, bypassing all cities in between, including Paris and Lyon, and only decelerating after 1000 kilometers in the Marseille LGV tunnel. Or a Sevilla to Barcelona non-stop AVE train can do the same, accelerating out of Sevilla, bypassing Madrid in the South-East of the city, Saragossa and Lleida and only decelerating once in Barcelona's suburbs. So when politicians mention France or Spain, it's not for the layout (star shaped) but for the *model* ! The "parallel" or "arterial" model does NOT depend on the shape...
@@KyrilPG You can do bypasses in Germany as well. The train then just doesn't stop at the station in question. France and Spain just have it easier to build bypasses because their demographic distribution is completely different from Germany.
For all it's downsides due to sharing tracks with slower service, the German rail system is quite resilient, even with all the construction and track closures resulting from it, you can still get anywhere reasonably quick thanks to the large number of alternative routes. And for most long journeys the trains are now just as fast if not faster than driving, with improvements coming (too) slowly but steadily.
Sure, but it's gotten to the point that it feels like the trains in Germany don't even run to a timetable anymore. The infrastructure just can't handle it anymore.
Nah, thts a joke. The train system is almost non existent at this point. Trains are getting cancelled and are lot more often delayed then punctual, stations look post apocalyptic, service is way too rare and the trains are dirty, broken and disgusting 99% of the times.
@@heisennoob6446 i guess it depends heavily on where you are. Here in east Germany things have been getting steadily better everywhere in the past 10 years after an initial decline. Last time I was in the Ruhr area though, things were extremely crowded and frequencies were very low for the large amount of demand and population. An RE/RB every hour is just way too low frequency, yet tracks are completely at capacity leading to horrible delays if anything goes wrong...
I love Germany's approach to rail. France may have a nice high-speed network but not everyone lives in Paris or Lyon. In the meantime regional services in France and Spain are horribly underfunded and have seen a massive decrease in service.
German and French people distributions are very dissimilar: the biggest part of French population is concentrated in and around Paris, in Ile de France and in a bunch of biggest cities (like Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux...) while Germany has a lot of big cities not so far apart without a main people concentration.
@@d1234asi have to agree that France's density repartition does not make the establishment of good regional service an easy task, but still, it definitely has been severely lacking investment in the past decades. France used to have really interesting lines outside of Paris, which where very useful, for example, a line going from Bordeaux and La Rochelle in the Atlantic side, all the way to Geneva, with even a night train service! It's hasn't been correctly used for ages, and some parts of the line are even closed due to lack of maintenance, like between Limoges and Angoulême. This, combined with a tendency for stations to be really removed from city centers, makes rail really hard to use for commoners. It's really a shame.
@@Running_Colours Yes! I kind of understand why some things are done in a certain way, but as a system, it's not great. For instance, if you want to get from Bretagne to another location than Paris, you're likely going to have to change stations in Paris (there are a few through trains, but not many). I understand why they are building a parallel HSL along the Mediterranean, but am not happy with unintegrated stations such as Monpellier-Sud-de-France or Aix-en-Provence-TGV, and feel others, like Valence-TGV or Nïmes-Pont-du-Gard, are totally underutilised. A half-hourly (or better) service would be so beneficial, but it's not even an hourly service... Spain is even worse in this regard, they have regularly ripped out the existing station to replace it with a much less connected location, in the best case in a suburb, like Zaragoza or Sevilla, in the worst case on the edge of town or beyond, like Burgos, Cuenca or Segovia (the latter still has its old station, too, but of course nothing interconnected). Germany has kept the old main stations almost to a fault (Köln and Hamburg Hbf are arguably too small for all traffic they have to cope with...)
@@Running_Colours I'm agree with you, there's in France the tendency to underfund and not upgrade transversal railway lines that connect cities without passing from Paris. For example doesn't exist an electrified line that connect Lyon and Bordeaux or Lyon and Clermont Ferrand (or Clermont Ferrand and Bordeaux)...
Something you forgot to mention with the airport connection is that the high speed line between Frankfurt and Cologne is actually so fast that it completely replaced flights on that axis.
@@SomePotato If its profitable for airlines and if people buy the tickets, why not? Thats the problem with short flights, theyre very inexpensive which is why people might rather fly from berlin to munich rather than take the train. but of course with the issue of climate change, governments do want to put people in trains or those sort of distances. that means making plane tickets more expensive and trying to make the service for trains more attractive. because the very important part in this is that the train causes far less pollution than the plane or a car, even less than a bus. making trains more popular is important for climate change. of course trains cant replace everything, a train from germany to china is never gonna happen, the plane is simply too fast for that but within europe, you can do a lot with the train and thats where the future is heading. not just within germany but within the entirety of europe.
@@Nutzer11 It still is. Taking the train is just a few minutes longer, which is completely negated by traveling to and from the airport and going through security.
@@SomePotato I know, Frankfurt Airport even has a ICE-Train station, but you really just can’t trust Deutsche Bahn, that you gonna be there on time. Then you either plan to arrive like 30-60 minutes earlier than necessary, or you simply just take the plane
Thank you for this video. Especially it was great that you mention Germany's polycentric geography in the beginning, which even German newspaper outlets often forget, if they they write articles about how much faster trains are anywhere else. However I was missing a mention of Flixtrain operating at 200km/h as well as other national rail providers extending their higher speed services into germany like ÖBB railjet, Ceske drahy or Thalys. There will be another future international high speed link besides Brenner or Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, which will he a high speed line between Dresden and Prague crossing the ore mountain range in a long tunnel as well.
@@matsv201 At the same time, the population is everywhere around Germany, well, at least West Germany (East Germany has much fewer settlements, comperatively speaking), you can't serve that with high speed trains.
@@MarioFanGamer659 I´m not quite sure i agree. In the western part most of the settlement that is somewhat large follow Rhen. In the north there is really very few large setlement. Of cause Hamburg and Berlin, then Hannover and Bremen. Even the smaler cities like Bielefeld, Wolfburg, Magdeburg is pretty much on a line. Northern East germany is almost as depopulated as Scandinavia is. I would say Germany is really not very diffrent to other Central european nations. The only diffrance is that Germany is like 5-10 times the population, and almost the same in size as the other nations around, like Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and with cities with a simular pattern. Of cause, its not france where like 80% of hte country is depopulated an all the people is cramed into the rest 20%.
@@MarioFanGamer659 I would like to claim its a fairly typical spreed.While there are no mega cities there (while the Düsseldorf-Dortmunt area is sort of one). There is plenty of fairly big cities. While you are right about there being loads of smaller towns around, this is not really decremental for high speed rail due to them collect passengers via feeder trains. And yes, Frankfurt is not technically in Rhen, its quite close. And well Stugart is quite a bit of, but its not as far as the rail can´t track. This is still very simular to the rest of Europe. I would like to claim that its really France that is the exception with more of a City-Villages set up and not like the rest of europe with Cities-towns-vilages.. Like in Sweden where i currently live. Untill quite recently (like the past 20 years) there was hardly any cities, just towns. (currently 9 cities, 20 years go it was just 4)
Unfortunately, NIMBYs and local parties are trying their best to prevent any expansion of the network, even much needed ones where there is only one track for a crucial ICE connection along several kilometers.
Unfortunately the FDP is probably the most pro HSR party in the country. SPD, CDU and the greens are all mostly serving NIMBYs and the Greens in particular are opposed to building any large scale project in any case.
@@MTobias So not true, but OK. The main thing the FDP stands for is deregulation If it was up to the FDP. We wouldn't have a state subsidized railway at all.
@TobiasM The Greens support the Deutschlandtakt. They forced the coalition to invest more in train infrastructure. Yes, there are factions inside the Greens who oppose that but they are a minority.
@@MTobiashow are the Greens the problem? They support major investments in the network. I agree with you about the CDU and the SPD. The SPD in both Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia want to hold back big projects between Hamburg, Hannover, and Bielefeld. And if it were up to the FDP 90% of the transportation budget would go to the Autobahn.
Germany really needs to get its act together and fix connections with neighboring countries. Because the Friesenbrücke is kaputt, you have to go via a stop in Venlo or take an expensive ICE, connections to France are slow, and don’t even think about going to Poland…
They are also blocking the renovation of the line from Munich to Prague, which was already agreed in the 1990s. On the German side, part of the line is still single-track and non-electrified.
Another bummer is the constant delays with the "Brenner Nordzulauf", i.e. the line from Munich to Austria. It was agreed upon by Germany, Austria and Italy to finish their respective parts simultaneously, to leverage the full potential of the Brenner base tunnel from the start. But now it almost seems that the Austrian an Italian parts of the line will be finished before the Germans even start with detailed planning (currently they are still in the process of identifying a suitable corridor).
I don't know; it feels like there aren't many countries where its actually better. Between Spain and Portugal, there are like 2 regional and two intercity trains a day, between Spain and France there are only 2 international high speed trains and maybe a few Rodalies going to Latour de carol and maybe a bit of traffic between Cerbère and Portbou, if there is any left. Between Poland and Lithuania there is 1 train a day, from Greece there are no international trains at all etc. And besides the HS France-Spain line (which baffles me with its 2 trains a day), none of these are high speed. Sure, there are also examples where there's more traffic, like France-Belgium-Netherlands, but that's not the rule.
The part with the different types of ICE-Trains was quite short, so here's a list: ICE1 - the oldest ICE. Has a 'locomotive' at each end. Kinda like the french TGVs, but with normal bogies. ICE2 - like the ICE1, but shorter and only with one locomotive instead of two. At the other end of the train is just a drivers cab. ICE3 - there are actually three different types of trains, which are called ICE 3: The original ICE3, the Velaro D ICE3 and the ICE3 NEO, a new version of the VELARO D ICE3. This was the first multiple unit ICE-train without locomotives. Top Speed 330 km/h. ICE T - kinda like the ICE 3, but with a lower top speed (220 km/h) and with tilting technology. ICE TD - diesel variant of the ICE T. No longer in service. ICE 4 - the new backbone of the ICE fleet. Has a lower top speed than the ICE3s, but is longer (depending on the configuration of the train - there are some short ICE4s too). ICE L - will be pushed into service in 2024. Produced by TALGO and loco hauled, with a drivers cab at the other end of the train. First ICE that will feature a level entry without stairs.
ICE 5 has also been announced by now, will most likely be the velaro novo instead of the avelia horizon since the db for some reason really doesn't want double decker ice's for the capacity that they aim for
@@connectingwings7212 as far as I know, there is no official announcement for the ICE 5 yet. Deutsche Bahn has told Alstom and Siemens some specifications, so they can develop concepts. Alstoms concept is based on the Avelia Horizon and Siemens concept is based on the Velaro Novo. It should be officially announced later this year. Other train producers can then try to offer their trains as well. Most likely Deutsche Bahn will prefer a single deck train. Reasons for that are: -passenger capacity only 10% to 15% higher on double deck trains -longer stops due to less doors on double deck trains -lower accessibility due to stairs on double deck trains -already existing maintenance facilities are built for single deck ICE-trains -double deck trains feel more cramped than single deck ones
@@connectingwings7212 I think the reasoning is that squeezing double amount of passengers through the same number of doors would lead to longer boarding/offboarding times. SNCF can easily get away with this as TGV they are mostly running pont-to point with few or no stops in between, but settlement structure in Germany means ICE will have a lot more stops on it's route. Double-decker ICE would either necessitate longer stops at stations, or induce risk of delays. With regional trains, this would in theory be even more pronounced, but short platform lengths at smaller stops often leave no other option. (Also, Regio and Fernverkehr are independent companies.)
I’d be interested in seeing an ‘explained’ video for Luxembourg. Considering it’s such a small yet very interesting country, you could probably end up combining the rail, tram, funicular and somewhat bus networks into one video. Especially intriguing when you find out that all transport is free.
I rode the Stuttgart to Paris ICE last week. The train ride itself went smoothly. There was an annoying transfer at Esslingen because my train from Salzburg originally said it would stop at Stuttgart, but then it didn't. Looking forward to the Stuttgart explained. It was definitely kind of a mess over there.
Yes! Finally! My question has been heared! Thank you for covering Stuttgart in the future! I would also be glad to provide video footage if needed! Thank you very much!
I really hope that DB and the German Government realize the potential of sleeper trains for international links, much like Austria has. Being able to step on a train, sleep there and wake up where you want to go is a good alternative to the massive dedicated rail corridors that are built in Asia for Maglevs. This puts less pressure on line speed while allowing long distance trips easily.
When I lived in Berlin from 2007 to 2014, there was a sleeper train to Paris. You could guess that it was highly frequented. But no. They ended the service because nobody used it. When I was in me teenage years, there were sleeper trains across all Europe. Most ended because people didn't use it. So sleeper trains are a nice idea, but in the end, travelers take other options.
@@weizenobstmusli8232 Taking over the German Lines has been a great Success for ÖBB though, as well as their other Nightjet Operations. I used to travel between Hamburg and Basel a lot, and the Nightjet on that Line often required booking 3+ Months in Adance because it is so popular.
1:40 Interesting on this map is that Munich - Vienna - Budapest are not ICE services, but ÖBB Railjet. The only ICE trains running to Vienna (and not on to Budapest) are using a different route from Nuremberg via Passau joining the ÖBB western mainline shown here at Wels. For many years, these have been operated by ICE-T only, until the 2000s by ICE1.
There is also at least one daily ICE to Innsbruck Hbf and one daily to Bregenz Hbf via Lindau. In the last few weeks, I have been seeing videos of ICE4's substituting on the EC118/9 Innsbruck Hbf to Dortmund via Lindau, Friedrichshafen, Ulm and Frankfurt.
@@keithparker5125 Yes, there are also single ICE services further into Switzerland to Chur and Interlaken - I would not call it a miss to leave them out. But Nuremberg - Vienna constitutes a main ICE line with several services daily, while Munich - Vienna - Budapest is no ICE line at all.
8:15 The Frankfurt Erfurt corridor is also already in planning. They are supposed to start building the first stretch from Frankfurt to the Würzburg-Hannover high speed line south of Fulda in 2025.
@@MTobias I live in Bad Hersfeld and our local government is lobbying hard to get a stop on the new line. I will benefit from that but it is stupid. Our town is too small to be worth a stop.
Discussing which lines would need a speed upgrade is fun, but unfortunately purely academic until the far greater problem of delays is fixed. If you want to get anywhere with at least 90% probability of arriving in time, you'd better plan in a 1 hour buffer, and add to that an additional 30 mins for every crucial connection train, the few minutes possibly saved on high speed tracks pale in comparison
At first, I scheduled to watch this video at 18:00, but something came up and I had to re-schedule it. In the second attempt, I was able to watch the video over 40%, but then supermarket was closing down, so I had to pause and go shopping. I have now successfully finished watching this video at 21:34. I do apologize for the inconveniences made.
It's certainly an interesting example of how to do long distance rail travel without strict high speed rail (isn't the rail jet predominantly a 200kph service)
as much as I don't want to admit when our austrian neighbours are doing things better than us, the Railjet service is what the ICE wishes it could be...
You forgot to mention the Fernbahntunnel Frankfurt project which will create four new platforms underground under Frankfurt Hbf and will remove the need for most ICE services to reverse back out of the station.
@@OntarioTrafficMan It's literally the expansion of Germanys biggest station for high speed services, and one of the most important high speed stations in Europe with Paris. He would've definitely mentioned it, especially because of how important it is.
Having lived in Spain and Germany, I must say that yes, it is cool to be able to go from Barcelona to Madrid in 2hrs at 320km/h but the German regional train network is much cooler
Great video. As someone who moved to Germany specifically Cologne few months ago, I loooove German trains...wish they were more punctual though. Idea for another topic....rail system in Poland, including high speed proposed system
I have just returned from a rail-based holiday in Germany. The regional trains were reasonably reliable (mostly within 10 minutes of schedule) but seriously overcrowded throughout the day while the EC and ICE trains were shambolic for timekeeping. Less cancellations than last year but regularly 40 to 50 minute behind schedule. Also frequent platform changes in the larger stations which is no joke when you have a suitcase as most platforms seem to be two full flights of stairs above the concourse or subway and in the circumstances with 100 people trying to change platforms there's no time to queue up for the lift. Last gripe beware of the combined rail air ticket. I purchased a Lufthansa ticket from Frankfurt which included rail travel from Cologne. This allowed 55 minutes between the train arrival (if on-time) and the aircraft departure. After my experience of Frankfurt on the outward trip I realised this was simply unachievable but when I turned up to catch an earlier train at Cologne I was told I would have to get in touch with Lufthansa to change the ticket to ride on an earlier train. So had to fork out for one myself.
Hi Reece! In the Czech Republic, where I am from, there is a new high speed line network to be built, when completed, it will be spanning the whole country. Generally, there are MANY interesting rail and public transoort project that would justify a video - the fabulous Prague Metro, the huge urban/regional rail expansion there, the airport rail link, the "Metro S" project (similar to the Leipzig City Tunnel) etc. And nice work on this one, as always anyway 😊
Hi! Thanks for the very nice overview of our German system! It is being badmouthed all over our country and it is nice to hear the view from a foreigner with knowledge of many different systems. Yes, mistakes were made, but overall I think we do not appreciate enough what we have. What truly excites me are the plans to improve connectivity of Frankfurt. A new 300km/h line to Mannheim as well as a high-speed connector to Fulda and the Hannover-Würzburg line. My favourite: Frankfurt Hbf will be upgraded to an underground go-through station for intercity services while keeping the overground terminus station (I think we learned from our Stuttgart 21 mistakes here). The next 10-20 years will definitely be exciting for rail lovers in Germany.
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Great video! What I noticed is the lack of east-west proper high speed lines in Germany. Hopefully this will be solved in the future. I'm looking forward to the Stuttgart21 explainer video!
I'd love to see a Stuttgart explainer. I was there last year and I hated it. It is currently a nightmare for pedestrians with that 1km tunnel you have to walk through before you even get out of the station. Hope they get the construction finished soon
Stuttgart citizen here. What do you want to know? I wrote a longer comment just a second ago you can check out under the video. About that tunnel, the situation is worse right now. As they are finishing the ceiling, they need the space for the cranes. So at the moment you need to walk around the whole construction area to reach the s-bahn, u-bahn or walk to the inner city 🙈 Currently the Deutsche Bahn says opening is early 2025. Things are looking pretty good already and they are actually posting regular updates on there youtube channel as well. But only in german as far as I know. I personally think the timeline might work out this time. About the project itself, I like it. I think it will change the look, shape and feel of the inner city in a really good way, for years to come. There will be a park area, where the tracks are located right now which will form a green lung threw out the city.
My first ride on the ICE was in 2019, as I began my family trip in Germany that summer. I took four rides then. I then took eight more rides on the ICE in 2024, as I went to a summer exchange program in Germany and stayed for an extra week after the program. These 12 rides make ICE the most used high-speed network by me. The ICE also provided my longest rides on a high-speed train in terms of travel time. My first ride in 2019, train 513 from Frankfurt Airport to Munich, set the record at 3 hours and 35 minutes until my fourth ride in 2024, train 1157 from Koln to Berlin, broke the record by 22 minutes. That was also my first and only ride on a Sprinter, which is the fastest services. My favorite model is ICE 1 because it gives me such a luxurious and comfortable feeling when it comes to traveling long distances. And I don't know whether I was lucky, as my longest delay on an ICE was just a mere 15 minutes on train 720 from Munich to Frankfurt in 2019.
The German rail network has always been the central one in Europe. After the war, the Deutsche Bundesbahn became the leading standard in integrating European railways, because of its centrality and its volume. Some political reasoning may also have played its part. DB led both the Trans Europ Express as well as the international freight network, with the axis Rotterdam-Genova as its backbone, through the Gotthard tunnel. But since the rise of high speed networks, most national carriers, including DB, have become more internally focussed. International connections were downgraded and even lost completely(as illustrated by the downfall of the TEE and its successor Eurocity). The sleeper train network vanished completely, including super modern and comfortable Talgo trains acquired by DB in the nineties and the beautiful dark blue ECN. And this all happened in a time in which low cost airlines soared, convincing the last train travelers to abandon their beloved international trains. A perfect storm. Now that people want to return to international train travel to avoid flying (for environmental reasons), there are no more trains and the routes between countries are too slow. Innovation in the field of signaling and power have proven to be insufficient or implemented at a too slow speed. The dirty little secret here is that it will be extremely hard to find enough demand for many cross border routes, especially when you look beyond the 'usual suspects' like Paris-London or any train leaving Brussels (the EU capital has taken well care of itself) and without interfering in the unfair competition with air travel, which is heavily subsidized. Building the 'missing links' proves extremely difficult, especially when major mountain chains and waterways need to be crossed, which happen to often be the natural borders of many states. Other (nimby-)problems appear in densely populated areas of which Europe has many, Paradoxically, Obviously, it is exactly those areas from which rising demand is coming.
Cool video! An underrated aspect of train travel in Germany is how laissez-faire the system is with the riders. You do not need a reservation on any German train (except sleepers) and you can hop on any ICE at the the last second. In comparison with Spain, Italy or France, which do have the more impressive HSR systems, it is much more low-key, usually cheaper, and rider-friendly. You can even ride all over Germany with Interrail in the best trains without paying one cent of surcharge for reservations! Not to mention the DB website is the best option for rail planning all over Europe, much better than any other domestic site even for their own countries. I remember being in North Portugal looking up trains on the DB app because it was so much easier than consulting the Spanish or Portuguese rail planning apps.
@@LB-pj3dp What do you mean by hopping on in the last second? Do you mean, one can board a train without a ticket and pay while in the train? Or do you mean boarding using a railpass without a reservation? Or just how easy it is to buy a ticket on any station?
I actually just got back from Germany. Spent 2 weeks travelling the country exclusively only via public transit. S and U-Bahn, ICE and RE express trains. The S-Bahn and U-Bhan are great the speed at which they run their units puts Toronto to shame. The movement of people is monumental with how fast they are. The ICE trains were cool but you can definitely tell when they are on older tracks because they bounce more. They were rather expensive as well for 2 people but the probation Bahn Card was a super help. I would highly recommend one of those if your travelling to Germany for a short period to cut off the cost of transit between cities. Or if time isn't a factor the Germany card was $49 Euro for unlimited regional express trains. Its monumental leaps ahead of the Canadian comparable. Minus the ICE trains we almost never looked at the time tables and just went to the station and a train was there to get us to our destination in good time.
That code sharing thing with DB and airlines is REALLY useful. It is the reason why I fly Lufthansa. I can book a flight through the cologne train station to my destination. The ICE will take my straight to Frankfurt and the Frankfurt train terminal is also the airport. It is very quick to get to your flight from there. It also means if the ICE gets delayed and I miss the flight that Lufthansa takes care of it. That also helps when coming back because of the plane is late and I miss my ICE I can just take another one heading in the same direction. This takes SO much stress out of flying.
It should also be mentioned that the ICE fleet will soon be expanded to include the ICE L (from Talgo). A high-speed route between Dresden and Prague is also being planned, with speeds of 200 or 230 between Dresden and Usti and 300 between Usti and Prague.
The Stuttgart 21 main issues is the losing of surface terminating tracks: if they only add new underground tracks instead to replace surface ones, it would have been a great project.
Last week - love how I can arrive in Frankfurt from Munich on an ICE train, then a few days later, use the same Frankfurt train station, go underground via escalators, and take the regional train (think GO train underground) to visit a cousin in Bad Homburg (trains every 15 mins/relaxing). Everything electric and quiet.
In case your wondering why the first german high speed line Hannover-Würzburg is where it is. It runs around the old german east-west border. In the nowadays unified Germany you would plan the network differently.
One thing a coworker mentioned is that the high speed trains and the low trains have to share the railways. So it a problem for regional trains when you to wait everytime that a high-speed train want to overtake them. And don't get me started about freight trains
When talking about cities that might be able to use some upgrades Hamburg should be mentioned, its not the largest station, but across europe contesting for top 2 or 3 in number of passengers. The main issue with hamburg being, not only is there no space to expand to, but there isnt even a similarly central area to build a replacement. Covered rivers, marshy terrain and already constructed buildings make it hard to find a decent spot. Digging down risk problems with groundwater, going tall is hard because of bridges and getting to those stacked tracks. Its a very complicated matter
Being from Germany and having been on the ICE several times, I can say that it is a decent experience. I'm still amazed that we have a better HSR system than some of the leading countries in terms of wealth. (Also, we often joke about the trains being delayed most of the time 😅)
→ 2:42 "... or an upgraded city-center hub [image of Berlin Alexanderplatz]" - this station doesn't have a connection to the distance rail network at all - only regional and local trains stop here (the IC/EC/ICE trains on the east-west direction pass through without stopping). → 5:00 "As usual, Switzerland likes to remind people that train delays often originate internationally, including in Germany." - That's similar in Germany: For cross-border trains, one of the most often mentioned reasons for a delay is "Verspätete Übergabe aus dem Ausland" (delayed handover from abroad). Of course, this just means "We don't care to actually finding out the real reason". → It might be worth noting that also the next level of distance trains, IC (Inter City) (often called EC (Euro City) when crossing borders) are using big parts of the high-speed network, though with a somewhat slower speed. They also have the "white with red strip" design, though with a gray roof. (As well as freight trains, where this is possible without impacting the people traffic too much.) And some of the cross-border lines are also used by high-speed trains from the neighboring countries (Thalys, TGV, Railjet).
Looking forward to your video on Stuttgart. The project with the train station downtown is huge. I forget if they had to change the architectural plans but they looked really cool. Stuttgart has a good S bahn system- my experience. The local train to Tuebingen, a university town 30 miles to the south, would take at least an hour. There are lots of small towns in the area that need service. So the locals can be really local. Don’t go at 4 AM lol. It is a densely populated area - at least, in my opinion - and the terrain seems challenging. Lots of rolling hills and a river. Also a lot of industrial uses in my recollection. And I seem to remember a trackside vineyard on a hill. Connections out of Stuttgart are not the easiest, it seems. To get to Strasbourg or Freiburg you have to somewhat go around the Black Forest, through Karlsruhe. Stuttgart is somewhat in a corner of Germany - which may present its challenges, including connection south to Switzerland. As I remember, one of the main hubs for trains south is Horb, a small town. But, it’s a really nice place to be. I hope you get there. Thanks.
4:01 Germany's notorious NIMBYism is also the result of Germany being biased in favor of building more autobahn/highway networks and less railway, since it's a country with a large and prestigious automobile industry (Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi and BMW).
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer In Germany for the most part only environmental activists (like NABU, BUND and Last Generation) strongly oppose the construction of new highway networks. Like I said most NIMBY's in Germany are really wealthy as well as being friendly towards the automobile (since they can afford some nice cars). They have no interest in railway networks since they usually don't use them.
@@georgobergfell Nicht wenn es um die geliebten dicken Karren gibt, die die deutsche Wirtschaft (mehr oder weniger) am Laufen erhält, anders als die Bahn, die keinen guten Ruf hierzulande genießt, unter anderem auch, weil man es versäumt hatte, die Bahn durch diverse Maßnahmen für den Großteil der Bevölkerung "attraktiv" zu machen.
Thanks for the summary. Two little mistakes I have to mention: there is no plans to upgrade Hamburg-Bremen. And speed upgrade Hannover- Berlin is nowhere near construction.
Thank you for covering my country! Our high speed rail system is pretty good, but there is a lot of repairs that need to be done. And this really shows. Only 62% of trains make it in time (within 6 minutes) to their destination. You'll need to plan in some extra time if you are travelling on routes with a lot of old lines.
I live in Kiel on the baltic sea coast and taking the train from here to anywhere really takes much longer than it should. These NIMBYs protesting any line out of Hamburg in any direction drive me crazy. Still dreaming of dedicated lines from Hamburg to Berlin, Hannover, Bremen+Rhein/Ruhr and mainland Denmark (with a branch to my home city Kiel) 🥲
Seevetal really takes the cake in this one as of late, such a small Kaff with nonsensical arguments delaying and endangering critical infrastructure for the entire north
@@purplebrick131 you're right. They are the definition of entitled NIMBYism. "We have 4 Autobahns and 2 rail lines in our boring suburban town and it works just fine, but a third rail line would destroy our town COMPLETELY so we have the right to completely cut off Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein FOREVER." I hate them, i have traveled that route like 10 times and at least 5 times there was some random absurd problem on the current main line that would not have had that much of an impact if there had been a second seperate line. Like it shouldn't matter if something happens between Lüneburg and Uelzen because it isn't even on the way between Hamburg and Hannover. But the Hamburg-Neumünster line with that absurd detour via Elmshorn has similar problems (just less NIMBYs because they don't even try to improve the line)
As a German, you forgot about delays. They are everywhere all the time. It's so bad, that it's genuinely surprising, when a train departs and arrives on time.
Building new high speed tracks takes time for planning and building. I sometimes take the ICE from Leipzig to Munich. In 2015 the new line was opened, going from Leipzig to Munich via Erfurt, Bamberg, Erlangen and Nürnberg with a travel time of 3 hours and 15 minutes. Before that you had to go via Augsburg in a travel time of 5 hours 30 minutes... So the new line is a nice cut in travel time. BUT looking to our neighbour France, their TGV network is special, because it's separated from the local train network and only for high speed travel.
Ah at 10:20 I see you included footage from the Wiesloch-Walldorf train station, nice! I used to use that train station all the time between Heidelberg and Karlsruhe.
Once, I had train from Munich to Berlin. Suddenly they stopped the train in out skirts of Munich and announced "Sorry we are on wrong track" now the train has to go back to Munich and then we will take a different route. We were like wtf...they call it an advanced train but it can't figure out it right track.
I will be riding the ICE next month from Berlin to Paris. I’m a train enthusiast and it’s something I’m looking forward to. I’m making a vlog about it, I hope it goes well. Thank you for sharing
One of the main reasons why Stuttgart 21 is controversial is that the new station has a much lower capacity than the old, thus actually worsening reliability. The current train station also is one of the train station causing the least delays on the network. Plus all the massive security issues with the new train station and the tunnels leading up to it. The tunnels to the station go through a type of rock that will swell if it gets wet, thus the tunnels have to be of smaller profile than usual, causeing issues if a fire were to break out. Because of other underground trains the station also is on a slope of around 5‰, therefore it will not technically be a railway station but a railway stop as the slope of the platforms would not be allowed for a railway station. It's a massive mess.
Stuttgart 21 suffers the same problem as the hamburg hauptbahnhof which has also 8 lines and this train station is overcrowded but recent they wanna improve it through more gates to bring the crowd to the lined instead of adding more lines like upgrading from 8 to 12 lines
In your overview at 5:30 you are missing an important addition to the core network: Frankfurt - Hanau - Gelnhausen - Fulda - Gerstungen - Erfurt. Frankfurt - Hanau: New ICE underground station planned in addition to the overground station plus accelerated accces through tunnels (early planning phase) Hanau - Gelnhausen: Upgrade to 4 tracks and 230km/h (constructions recently started) Gelnhausen - Fulda: Dedicated HS line, connecting to the Fulda - Würzburg HS line (in permission planning) Fulda - Gerstungen: Dedicated HS line connecting the HS line Fulda - Kassel with the already upgraded line Eisenach - Erfurt (in permission planning)
7:21 and the tunnels will need to be rebuilt many times because the rock will expand (it will absorb water and expand) and the station has a dangerous tilt AND is prone to flooding...
My small town closed its station and the closest ones are each 20 minutes away by car. One of them only has a single line that goes to the next bigger town over every small village known to man (its currently replaced by a bus they appear to have bought from som suspicious people because its the worst experience I've even had). The other one used to have an ICE go through that took you took you to Berlin but got replaced. Every way you wanna go, our need to travel to Stendal first. I remember all my trains running late or just being cancelled at 10PM in Stendal with - 7°C and the Station Doors being left open and I wasn't even supposed to be there. The DB told me that i was free to use any train that got me home because off all the delays which was bullshit, because on the train home i got screamed at by the conductor because my ticket wasn't for this train. Thanks Lady. She only let me go because i pretended to be a pitiful girl on her way home to visit her sick mother (including me bawling my eyes out). My journey to Berlin was even worse though. I had to get on like 3 different Regional Trains, even the Goddamm Ferkeltaxi to Rathenow which was squeezed full. And anytime i Travel in a Way which takes me to Bahnhof Uelzen i know the train will be late. Uelzen is the other closest bigger train station and i despise it with all my heart. Its the Hundertwasser Bahnhof with special design by the artist Hundertwasser. It's horrible to navigate, dark, musty, smells especially bad like pee and taking my mom in a wheelchair through there made me wanna die
Looking forward to the video about Stuttgart! :) If needed, I could provide video footage of the Stadtbahn, rack railway, funicular and the heritage trams.
German Highspeed Trains drive very fast but are delayed anyways to ensure you miss your connection at which point you spend an hour or so at the station doing 0 km/h until the next train comes. Oh an if your trip is in the 2nd half of the day and long enough don't count on actually getting to your destination in the same day. This of course is the experience you get when you're lucky. If you're unlucky they strike for a week at which point walking doesn't seem so slow anymore.
Great video. I would love a video on the UKs train system. Inside the UK its easy to get pessemistic, or sometimes optimistic (depending on what journey you take) about our systems, but id love to hear a less biased international view on how the UK is connected by rail!
Having spoken to several Germans, they feel DB's reliability has gone downhill to the point that they consider the UK's rail system to be much better. Their only complaint is just how expensive it is in the UK, it's incredibly cost-uncompetitive with driving and sometimes even flying (if you wanted to do London-Newquay or London-Aberdeen for example).
In Germany it's the same. It's become a standard small-talk subject here in Germany to complain about the railway when you meet somebody after travelling by rail. I really hate these people because we have it better here than maybe 90% of all the other countries.
@@bananenmusli2769 yeah I hear a lot of people talking poorly about trains in the UK. I tend to find it fast, priced ok with a Railcard and reliable mostly traveling on the western main line. I think it is a completely different story in other areas such as the trans Pennine express.
You forgot the new ICE L, which will be introduced next year. In Germany we jokingly say L is for langsam (slow) because the Top speed is only 230 km/h. Looks rather like a replacement for the IC trains not the ICE. It will be the first ICE train without stairs at the entrance so people in wheelchairs can easily board the train.
I have heared so many stories from Frankfurt am Main Flughafen Fernbahnhof (yes that's the full name) mostly from my dad cause he was an Engineer who was responsible for the tunnels and connections in that area. Every time we drive along the A3 (the Autobahn cutting the train station off from the airport) he always tells a new story about his time there during construction. Also I just like it when the automated announcements sais "Gleis ... steht ICE... nach ... über Frankfurt am Main Flughafen Fernbahnhof" It just sounds really interesting Idk I can't desribe it
I hate whenever my train runs through this station. There are always a lot of people with a lot of bags, so afterwards you have a full train and more bags than any train could handle.
@@_TeXoN_In the last decades, Deutsche Bahn forgot about passengers carrying substantial amounts of luggage. Former IC network with the old 1970s carriages had much more storage capacity for bags etc. When designing the ICE trains, apparently DB mgmt just thought of businesspeople using them, carrying not more than a laptop and somthing to eat.
It's also the Bahnhof with the worst acustics I've found so far. It's completely impossible to understand anything in there, due to the extreme echo having very reflective surfaces in weird shapes on the ceiling and walls
8:09 I guess Berlin to Leipzig and Dresden could use a 300 km/h line but since it’s already 200 km/h and with a time of 60 minutes fitting well into the clock face schedule, I don’t really see it happening any time soon.
As stated, the system integrates really well with regional trains (if they are on time) and it’s often faster to do 100-200km sections on regional train’s rather than taking the shortest route to a high speed stop first My favorite regional to high speed transition station is Halle (Saale) which is situated on the Berlin-Erfurt line north-west of Leipzig
Just like Stuttgart 21, the Deutsche Bahn is currently in the process to build a new through station underneath Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, which, as you mentioned, is a terminus style station for long distance transit. The new through station will be dedicated to high-speed transit only. This is part of the Deutschlandtakt, a public transit frame work by the federal government, that seeks to relieve congestions on the lines and improve punctuallity. It's projected that, upon completion, the new Frankfurt through station will improve punctuality by 18 minutes throughout the network.
Ok some notes: Current lines - On your diagram the Frankfurt to Nuremberg line is missing. This is one of the most important connections - International ICE also run to Amsterdam (you even show ICE in the Netherlands in the Video) - The connection to Copenhagen hasn't been operated by ICEs for years Future lines - There are also two planned high speed lines effectively connection Frankfurt to Erfurt via Fulda (the Frankfurt to Fulda part already is pretty far in the planning stages) - The planned lines in the North head out from Hannover to Hamburg and Bremen (not from Hamburg to Bremen and Hannover) - By now DB has begun to operate nearly all old "normal" Intercity-Lines with ICE Trains, but of course they are just as the old ICs on these lines Trains: - The ICE TD has left service years ago
As someone regularly traveling between Frankfurt and Würzburg (at the corner from Nürnberg to Hannover) I just want to add that there is already a high speed line from Würzburg to Nantenbach (near Lohr so about 1/3 of the length between the two cities). The problem with completing the line is the build up area from Frankfurt to Aschaffenburg (property prices are quite high there) and the mountainous area from Aschaffenburg to Lohr (called Spessart) where locals are opposed of further development. Also there are laws making it harder to develop previously green areas that require you to sponsor a project for revitalising nature which makes it rather unattractive to finish the route.
Lived there for 20 years. Did frequent business travel for 3 years. 1/4 ICEs will be late. Delays are often > 1 hour. My worst delay war 5 hours, where they dumped me off in Kassel and then told to wait 1 hour for another train. I prefer the TGV network.
This video is not complex, it also lacks a branch line to Czechia, which is already in the phase of geological exploration for a 25-26 km long tunnel under the Ore Mountains, which will help the old line in the Elbe Valley.
That's european union for you. Banning planes and cars but not providing a continent-wide reliable and integrated rail network.... I think the last time Europe saw reliable trains running from France to Poland, it was the work of nazis -_-
Hi Reece, Wonderful explanation as usual Would be interesting to see a video on the rest of Switzerland network, especially the Intercity one, I know it's not high-speed but would be great, especially since normal "still fast but not high-speed" intercity services are soooo underrated, IMO. They do a big share of the work in rail travel, and are easier to implement for countries that are behind the curve, if dedicated HSR is not an option yet, to bring people on board public transport. (Like we are seeing with Via-rail and Amtrak). Annnd I feel like a "nation-wide" Switzerland video is missing, so that would be killing 2 pigeons with 1 stone. 🙂
Whenever I'm checking public transit in a city I always end up here so now I subbed , specially because you are located in my favorite city. Looking forward to your European trips, it's always interesting to see how someone from NA react to European public transits :)
8:06 You forgot the new route to Prag behind Dresden. Also a new Link for international railwayoperation connecting Berlin and Vienna via Prag. I would love to meet up with you in real Life to discuss more about international railoperation. You are inspiring. 🎉 Greatings Form Germany 😊
I do agree mostly. The core of german railway is very good. But a big problem comes with infrastructure, funding and modernization. The chance, that you have some minor or major problem on your travel is really high. The most common thing is, you don't get your connecting train because yours had a delay of like 40min. (yes I know, you can use your ticket for any available alternative, but the problem persists) and the App doesn't do a great job either. Very often it doesn't show some trains that could be a beneficial alternative, or it doesn't show delays fast enough. I already had a train where DB App thought it would be too late for the connection, then showed the connecting train having 20min of delay himself, only to revert everything 5min later to the point where the connecting train lost half of it's delay so it won't be available. Only to then update it with another 20min of delay. Who should know what's happening, when the system is that jumpy? Lane-changes in the very last second, faulty displays at the station itself. All in all it has many small problems so it feels like a complete mess, even though in essence it's a pretty good train service.
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I'm sorry, this is a fumbled mess of a video. Much like Germany's high speed rail systems. Thankfully, when you get to the Netherlands, it will be crystal clear and easy to understand.
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I mean that we need more overtracks to reduce wasting money for four track constellations. That would be the right thing to build rail networks especially if you build switches with low degrees of curves.
The big problem, not just with high-speed rail but with rail in general, is that in the last decade, there has been no political incentive behind building new or upgrading existing infrastructure. Peter Ramsauer, Alexander Dobrindt, Andreas Scheuer, and now Volker Wissing, all of these guys were in charge of infrastructure at the federal level, and all of them prioritized building and funding new autobahn projects.
Or highspeed railway lines which stop right before the big cities, where the network got even more congested because of this
They definitely should. Some of the stations in Berlin are in dire need of a clean, and upgrade
I wonder why Germany would prioritise car infrastructure.
Amateurs. We don't even pretend in the US. Lol
Truuuue… it has been systematical defunded for a good time now. There are now privat lobbist for rail .. on the other hand the biggest automotiv industry in the world.
Having just travelled in Germany for a month, this was a joy to watch. Before this trip (not my first to Germany), I had the impression that the train system is near-perfection. Talking to Germans (and having my own experience), people are very frustrated with the chronic late train problem. As a Canadian, it is still the dream.
I guess it's getting used to very high standards and getting frustrated when these aren't met. So for me, being a German who regularly uses the ICE, this was also a very educative watch and helped me get off my high horse
As a German with lots of train traveling experience, I can confidently say: It's not nearly as bad as some people make it seem.
Sure, there's a rather high percentage of delayed trains, and that's not good.
But most of the time, you reach your destination within one hour of the planned arrival time. Sure, that's not great, but if you don't plan for "I'm going to be in Munich at 09:30 because I have a meeting there at 10:00", but rather plan with a bit of buffer time, it's actually fine.
Sure, it's annoying to be later than you planned, but at least in my experience, most travel isn't time critical.
And besides: It's not like airplanes or even your car are always on time. Flights get delayed as well, you can get stuck in traffic with your car. Trains might get delayed more often, but it can happen with any other mode of transport just as well.
@@InterFelix Die Deutsche Bahn ist besser als ihr Ruf. Mit ein bisschen Puffer kommt man entspannter an als mit dem Auto. Außer man will zum Flughafen. Da vertraue ich aus Erfahrung (Taxifahrt von Köln zum Flughafen nachts) dem Auto. Da habe ich mein Schicksal zumindest selbst in der Hand.
The biggest current problem is the plummeting punctuality of intercity trains since COVID. I've usually defended DB, but 65% punctuality is abysmal.
@@InterFelix The more buffer you need, the less attractive/competitive it gets. Reliability is definitely an issue and it is not just an issue because Germans are demanding and like to complain.
I think a lot of the controversy around Stuttgart 21 comes from the fact that it isn't supposed to compliment the existing station, but to replace it. Replacing 16 terminus platforms with eight throughrunning platforms will get tight. The new station will be pretty much at capacity as soon as it opens.
Compare that to Zürich, where they also built a huge new underground throughrunning station beneath the existing huge terminus. They did that, but just kept the terminus platforms as well, so it's a strict capacity upgrade.
Some have accused Stuttgart 21 to be a real estate project, motivated not by efforts to actually improve public transit, but by the huge area of city center land that could be developed were the current tracks to be demolished.
Exactly.
I don’t think anybody would disagree with the statement that Stuttgart 21 is both a railway and an urban development project. The disagreement starts when asking whether is more of the former or the latter kind.
BTW, there is a fairly neutral video on Stuttgart 21 on RUclips: “The truth about Stuttgart 21 doesn’t exist.” It is in German but has author-provided English subtitles. It is close to two years old, so a few things are already outdated.
@@aphextwin5712 that video is excellent, I can highly recommend it as well
Yep, it’s a complex project - Zurich Station is a super interesting facility as well
As someone who works in the industry I have to say the video is very good. Most people really miss a lot of the origins of the problems of the German network. Especially the problem that Germany can't do a star shape or something like this.
Yes, this is something I have to tell my local politicians every time they reference France or Japan when it comes to dedicated high-speed lines. Not to mention, I have to always remind them, that in Japan the entirety of the regional network is narrow-gauge and unsuited for high-speed lines.
@@Ruhrpottpatriot why a star shape?
The problem is not the layout (star shaped or grid shaped), it's the model : Germany chose to create a "serial" network (or "string of beads") where all trains have to run through every medium or large cities on long distance services, with only isolated stretches of high-speed lines in between cities.
Once again, layout and model are two different things, the layout is the shape and depends on where the cities are located.
But the model is the way lines are built : each line and its extensions form a continuous high-speed corridor, sometimes with long branches.
France and Spain went for the "parallel" (as in electrical circuitry) or "arterial" model where trains can either run through cities to serve downtown stations or completely bypass them depending on their services (or quickly stop at out-of-center on-line full speed through stations).
A TGV train from Lille (on the Belgian border of France) to Marseille on the Mediterranean coast can be entirely non-stop and stay on high-speed lines for the whole trip, accelerating out of Lille, bypassing all cities in between, including Paris and Lyon, and only decelerating after 1000 kilometers in the Marseille LGV tunnel.
Or a Sevilla to Barcelona non-stop AVE train can do the same, accelerating out of Sevilla, bypassing Madrid in the South-East of the city, Saragossa and Lleida and only decelerating once in Barcelona's suburbs.
So when politicians mention France or Spain, it's not for the layout (star shaped) but for the *model* ! The "parallel" or "arterial" model does NOT depend on the shape...
@@KyrilPG what you are describing is the symptom, not the cause.
@@KyrilPG You can do bypasses in Germany as well. The train then just doesn't stop at the station in question.
France and Spain just have it easier to build bypasses because their demographic distribution is completely different from Germany.
For all it's downsides due to sharing tracks with slower service, the German rail system is quite resilient, even with all the construction and track closures resulting from it, you can still get anywhere reasonably quick thanks to the large number of alternative routes. And for most long journeys the trains are now just as fast if not faster than driving, with improvements coming (too) slowly but steadily.
Sure, but it's gotten to the point that it feels like the trains in Germany don't even run to a timetable anymore. The infrastructure just can't handle it anymore.
Nah, thts a joke. The train system is almost non existent at this point. Trains are getting cancelled and are lot more often delayed then punctual, stations look post apocalyptic, service is way too rare and the trains are dirty, broken and disgusting 99% of the times.
@@heisennoob6446I wouldn't say the trains are bad, but the gamble on delays is way too big.
@@heisennoob6446 i guess it depends heavily on where you are. Here in east Germany things have been getting steadily better everywhere in the past 10 years after an initial decline. Last time I was in the Ruhr area though, things were extremely crowded and frequencies were very low for the large amount of demand and population. An RE/RB every hour is just way too low frequency, yet tracks are completely at capacity leading to horrible delays if anything goes wrong...
Being as fast as driving is a good place to be, as rail travel has a lot of other benefits
Happy to be of help with the footage!
It’s good to see a video which is honest and balanced about the challenges that DB faces!
Thanks again!
DB's master plan:
-Create high-speed trains
-Make them do comically large delays
I love Germany's approach to rail. France may have a nice high-speed network but not everyone lives in Paris or Lyon. In the meantime regional services in France and Spain are horribly underfunded and have seen a massive decrease in service.
German and French people distributions are very dissimilar: the biggest part of French population is concentrated in and around Paris, in Ile de France and in a bunch of biggest cities (like Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux...) while Germany has a lot of big cities not so far apart without a main people concentration.
@@d1234asi have to agree that France's density repartition does not make the establishment of good regional service an easy task, but still, it definitely has been severely lacking investment in the past decades. France used to have really interesting lines outside of Paris, which where very useful, for example, a line going from Bordeaux and La Rochelle in the Atlantic side, all the way to Geneva, with even a night train service! It's hasn't been correctly used for ages, and some parts of the line are even closed due to lack of maintenance, like between Limoges and Angoulême. This, combined with a tendency for stations to be really removed from city centers, makes rail really hard to use for commoners. It's really a shame.
@@Running_Colours Yes! I kind of understand why some things are done in a certain way, but as a system, it's not great. For instance, if you want to get from Bretagne to another location than Paris, you're likely going to have to change stations in Paris (there are a few through trains, but not many). I understand why they are building a parallel HSL along the Mediterranean, but am not happy with unintegrated stations such as Monpellier-Sud-de-France or Aix-en-Provence-TGV, and feel others, like Valence-TGV or Nïmes-Pont-du-Gard, are totally underutilised. A half-hourly (or better) service would be so beneficial, but it's not even an hourly service...
Spain is even worse in this regard, they have regularly ripped out the existing station to replace it with a much less connected location, in the best case in a suburb, like Zaragoza or Sevilla, in the worst case on the edge of town or beyond, like Burgos, Cuenca or Segovia (the latter still has its old station, too, but of course nothing interconnected).
Germany has kept the old main stations almost to a fault (Köln and Hamburg Hbf are arguably too small for all traffic they have to cope with...)
@@Running_Colours I'm agree with you, there's in France the tendency to underfund and not upgrade transversal railway lines that connect cities without passing from Paris. For example doesn't exist an electrified line that connect Lyon and Bordeaux or Lyon and Clermont Ferrand (or Clermont Ferrand and Bordeaux)...
Infact I prefer the italian system (in the north)
Something you forgot to mention with the airport connection is that the high speed line between Frankfurt and Cologne is actually so fast that it completely replaced flights on that axis.
To be fair, the idea of having a 200 km flight is absurd.
@@SomePotato If its profitable for airlines and if people buy the tickets, why not? Thats the problem with short flights, theyre very inexpensive which is why people might rather fly from berlin to munich rather than take the train.
but of course with the issue of climate change, governments do want to put people in trains or those sort of distances. that means making plane tickets more expensive and trying to make the service for trains more attractive.
because the very important part in this is that the train causes far less pollution than the plane or a car, even less than a bus. making trains more popular is important for climate change. of course trains cant replace everything, a train from germany to china is never gonna happen, the plane is simply too fast for that but within europe, you can do a lot with the train and thats where the future is heading. not just within germany but within the entirety of europe.
@@SomePotato Well, Lufthansa has flights from Stuttgart to Frankfurt (40 min), so it can't be that stupid :)
@@Nutzer11 It still is. Taking the train is just a few minutes longer, which is completely negated by traveling to and from the airport and going through security.
@@SomePotato I know, Frankfurt Airport even has a ICE-Train station, but you really just can’t trust Deutsche Bahn, that you gonna be there on time. Then you either plan to arrive like 30-60 minutes earlier than necessary, or you simply just take the plane
Thank you for this video. Especially it was great that you mention Germany's polycentric geography in the beginning, which even German newspaper outlets often forget, if they they write articles about how much faster trains are anywhere else.
However I was missing a mention of Flixtrain operating at 200km/h as well as other national rail providers extending their higher speed services into germany like ÖBB railjet, Ceske drahy or Thalys.
There will be another future international high speed link besides Brenner or Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, which will he a high speed line between Dresden and Prague crossing the ore mountain range in a long tunnel as well.
That is true, but Germany also have a absolutely massive population and are tiny in geographical area.... Well tiny compare to the population.
@@matsv201 At the same time, the population is everywhere around Germany, well, at least West Germany (East Germany has much fewer settlements, comperatively speaking), you can't serve that with high speed trains.
@@MarioFanGamer659 I´m not quite sure i agree. In the western part most of the settlement that is somewhat large follow Rhen.
In the north there is really very few large setlement. Of cause Hamburg and Berlin, then Hannover and Bremen. Even the smaler cities like Bielefeld, Wolfburg, Magdeburg is pretty much on a line.
Northern East germany is almost as depopulated as Scandinavia is.
I would say Germany is really not very diffrent to other Central european nations. The only diffrance is that Germany is like 5-10 times the population, and almost the same in size as the other nations around, like Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and with cities with a simular pattern.
Of cause, its not france where like 80% of hte country is depopulated an all the people is cramed into the rest 20%.
@@matsv201 As much as there are many settlements on the Rhine, there still are many small ones instead of a few big ones.
@@MarioFanGamer659 I would like to claim its a fairly typical spreed.While there are no mega cities there (while the Düsseldorf-Dortmunt area is sort of one). There is plenty of fairly big cities.
While you are right about there being loads of smaller towns around, this is not really decremental for high speed rail due to them collect passengers via feeder trains.
And yes, Frankfurt is not technically in Rhen, its quite close.
And well Stugart is quite a bit of, but its not as far as the rail can´t track.
This is still very simular to the rest of Europe. I would like to claim that its really France that is the exception with more of a City-Villages set up and not like the rest of europe with Cities-towns-vilages..
Like in Sweden where i currently live. Untill quite recently (like the past 20 years) there was hardly any cities, just towns. (currently 9 cities, 20 years go it was just 4)
Unfortunately, NIMBYs and local parties are trying their best to prevent any expansion of the network, even much needed ones where there is only one track for a crucial ICE connection along several kilometers.
There are to less cool people in politics - especially on municipal level. Just old CDU/FDP car fanatics. So get involved now :D
Unfortunately the FDP is probably the most pro HSR party in the country. SPD, CDU and the greens are all mostly serving NIMBYs and the Greens in particular are opposed to building any large scale project in any case.
@@MTobias So not true, but OK. The main thing the FDP stands for is deregulation If it was up to the FDP. We wouldn't have a state subsidized railway at all.
@TobiasM The Greens support the Deutschlandtakt. They forced the coalition to invest more in train infrastructure. Yes, there are factions inside the Greens who oppose that but they are a minority.
@@MTobiashow are the Greens the problem? They support major investments in the network. I agree with you about the CDU and the SPD. The SPD in both Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia want to hold back big projects between Hamburg, Hannover, and Bielefeld. And if it were up to the FDP 90% of the transportation budget would go to the Autobahn.
Germany really needs to get its act together and fix connections with neighboring countries. Because the Friesenbrücke is kaputt, you have to go via a stop in Venlo or take an expensive ICE, connections to France are slow, and don’t even think about going to Poland…
They are also blocking the renovation of the line from Munich to Prague, which was already agreed in the 1990s. On the German side, part of the line is still single-track and non-electrified.
Another bummer is the constant delays with the "Brenner Nordzulauf", i.e. the line from Munich to Austria. It was agreed upon by Germany, Austria and Italy to finish their respective parts simultaneously, to leverage the full potential of the Brenner base tunnel from the start. But now it almost seems that the Austrian an Italian parts of the line will be finished before the Germans even start with detailed planning (currently they are still in the process of identifying a suitable corridor).
I don't know; it feels like there aren't many countries where its actually better. Between Spain and Portugal, there are like 2 regional and two intercity trains a day, between Spain and France there are only 2 international high speed trains and maybe a few Rodalies going to Latour de carol and maybe a bit of traffic between Cerbère and Portbou, if there is any left. Between Poland and Lithuania there is 1 train a day, from Greece there are no international trains at all etc. And besides the HS France-Spain line (which baffles me with its 2 trains a day), none of these are high speed.
Sure, there are also examples where there's more traffic, like France-Belgium-Netherlands, but that's not the rule.
@@raileonBut that defenetly doesn't mean, that that is acceptable!
For me from Berlin international connections to the east and west have always been quite good.
The part with the different types of ICE-Trains was quite short, so here's a list:
ICE1 - the oldest ICE. Has a 'locomotive' at each end. Kinda like the french TGVs, but with normal bogies.
ICE2 - like the ICE1, but shorter and only with one locomotive instead of two. At the other end of the train is just a drivers cab.
ICE3 - there are actually three different types of trains, which are called ICE 3: The original ICE3, the Velaro D ICE3 and the ICE3 NEO, a new version of the VELARO D ICE3. This was the first multiple unit ICE-train without locomotives. Top Speed 330 km/h.
ICE T - kinda like the ICE 3, but with a lower top speed (220 km/h) and with tilting technology.
ICE TD - diesel variant of the ICE T. No longer in service.
ICE 4 - the new backbone of the ICE fleet. Has a lower top speed than the ICE3s, but is longer (depending on the configuration of the train - there are some short ICE4s too).
ICE L - will be pushed into service in 2024. Produced by TALGO and loco hauled, with a drivers cab at the other end of the train. First ICE that will feature a level entry without stairs.
The "L" in ICE-L meaning "langsam".
Often ICE2 are used paired and split to reach different destinations
ICE 5 has also been announced by now, will most likely be the velaro novo instead of the avelia horizon since the db for some reason really doesn't want double decker ice's for the capacity that they aim for
@@connectingwings7212 as far as I know, there is no official announcement for the ICE 5 yet. Deutsche Bahn has told Alstom and Siemens some specifications, so they can develop concepts. Alstoms concept is based on the Avelia Horizon and Siemens concept is based on the Velaro Novo. It should be officially announced later this year. Other train producers can then try to offer their trains as well.
Most likely Deutsche Bahn will prefer a single deck train. Reasons for that are: -passenger capacity only 10% to 15% higher on double deck trains
-longer stops due to less doors on double deck trains
-lower accessibility due to stairs on double deck trains
-already existing maintenance facilities are built for single deck ICE-trains
-double deck trains feel more cramped than single deck ones
@@connectingwings7212 I think the reasoning is that squeezing double amount of passengers through the same number of doors would lead to longer boarding/offboarding times. SNCF can easily get away with this as TGV they are mostly running pont-to point with few or no stops in between, but settlement structure in Germany means ICE will have a lot more stops on it's route. Double-decker ICE would either necessitate longer stops at stations, or induce risk of delays.
With regional trains, this would in theory be even more pronounced, but short platform lengths at smaller stops often leave no other option. (Also, Regio and Fernverkehr are independent companies.)
I’d be interested in seeing an ‘explained’ video for Luxembourg. Considering it’s such a small yet very interesting country, you could probably end up combining the rail, tram, funicular and somewhat bus networks into one video. Especially intriguing when you find out that all transport is free.
It’s interesting, but it’s very niche! I’ll still probably explain it at some point
@@RMTransit I think that the fact it’s such a small country makes it more intriguing
5:26
Korrektion of the upgrade and new lines:
Hannover - Berlin 300kph
Augsburg- ulm 300kph
Karlsruhe - basel 250kph
Hannover- bielefeld - Hamm (Ruhr) 300kph
Nurnberg- Würzburg 300 kph
Hannover- hamburg 300 kph
I own a BahnCard 100 and it really is amazing, the ride and service in the ICE is very pleasant, so I take the ICE every week for leisure and work.
Lucky 😭😭😭
I rode the Stuttgart to Paris ICE last week. The train ride itself went smoothly. There was an annoying transfer at Esslingen because my train from Salzburg originally said it would stop at Stuttgart, but then it didn't.
Looking forward to the Stuttgart explained. It was definitely kind of a mess over there.
Yes! Finally! My question has been heared! Thank you for covering Stuttgart in the future! I would also be glad to provide video footage if needed! Thank you very much!
I really hope that DB and the German Government realize the potential of sleeper trains for international links, much like Austria has. Being able to step on a train, sleep there and wake up where you want to go is a good alternative to the massive dedicated rail corridors that are built in Asia for Maglevs. This puts less pressure on line speed while allowing long distance trips easily.
When I lived in Berlin from 2007 to 2014, there was a sleeper train to Paris. You could guess that it was highly frequented. But no. They ended the service because nobody used it. When I was in me teenage years, there were sleeper trains across all Europe. Most ended because people didn't use it. So sleeper trains are a nice idea, but in the end, travelers take other options.
@@weizenobstmusli8232 Taking over the German Lines has been a great Success for ÖBB though, as well as their other Nightjet Operations. I used to travel between Hamburg and Basel a lot, and the Nightjet on that Line often required booking 3+ Months in Adance because it is so popular.
1:40 Interesting on this map is that Munich - Vienna - Budapest are not ICE services, but ÖBB Railjet. The only ICE trains running to Vienna (and not on to Budapest) are using a different route from Nuremberg via Passau joining the ÖBB western mainline shown here at Wels. For many years, these have been operated by ICE-T only, until the 2000s by ICE1.
There is also at least one daily ICE to Innsbruck Hbf and one daily to Bregenz Hbf via Lindau. In the last few weeks, I have been seeing videos of ICE4's substituting on the EC118/9 Innsbruck Hbf to Dortmund via Lindau, Friedrichshafen, Ulm and Frankfurt.
Correct, the ICE connection to Vienna connects to the core network in Nuremberg and passes through Regensburg, Passau and Linz.
@@keithparker5125 Yes, there are also single ICE services further into Switzerland to Chur and Interlaken - I would not call it a miss to leave them out. But Nuremberg - Vienna constitutes a main ICE line with several services daily, while Munich - Vienna - Budapest is no ICE line at all.
8:15 The Frankfurt Erfurt corridor is also already in planning. They are supposed to start building the first stretch from Frankfurt to the Würzburg-Hannover high speed line south of Fulda in 2025.
Unfortunately a lot of planning sins are committed with that project, such as not bypassing Bad Hersfeld
@@MTobias I live in Bad Hersfeld and our local government is lobbying hard to get a stop on the new line. I will benefit from that but it is stupid. Our town is too small to be worth a stop.
@@MTobias I'm question on why such an indirect path has been taken in the first place.
@@MarioFanGamer659geological reasons, the mountains there are too unstable to build long Tunnels.
@@johanneswerner7649 Okay, that's a legit excuse then.
Discussing which lines would need a speed upgrade is fun, but unfortunately purely academic until the far greater problem of delays is fixed. If you want to get anywhere with at least 90% probability of arriving in time, you'd better plan in a 1 hour buffer, and add to that an additional 30 mins for every crucial connection train, the few minutes possibly saved on high speed tracks pale in comparison
At first, I scheduled to watch this video at 18:00, but something came up and I had to re-schedule it. In the second attempt, I was able to watch the video over 40%, but then supermarket was closing down, so I had to pause and go shopping. I have now successfully finished watching this video at 21:34. I do apologize for the inconveniences made.
I rode ICE first class when I was in germany last month, the quality of the cabin and dining area was spectacular. Such a great ride.
Can you please make a video about the Austrian Railjet? It's a fascinating and interesting train imo.
I’d like to!
It's certainly an interesting example of how to do long distance rail travel without strict high speed rail (isn't the rail jet predominantly a 200kph service)
+1 for a railjet / Austria video
@RMTransit what's stopping you so? 😊
as much as I don't want to admit when our austrian neighbours are doing things better than us, the Railjet service is what the ICE wishes it could be...
You forgot to mention the Fernbahntunnel Frankfurt project which will create four new platforms underground under Frankfurt Hbf and will remove the need for most ICE services to reverse back out of the station.
Which is honestly what should have been done for Stutgart as well.
Probably the most important project for the Rhein HSR corridor right now
Just because he didn't mention it doesn't mean he forgot
@@OntarioTrafficMan It's literally the expansion of Germanys biggest station for high speed services, and one of the most important high speed stations in Europe with Paris. He would've definitely mentioned it, especially because of how important it is.
Having lived in Spain and Germany, I must say that yes, it is cool to be able to go from Barcelona to Madrid in 2hrs at 320km/h but the German regional train network is much cooler
Great video. As someone who moved to Germany specifically Cologne few months ago, I loooove German trains...wish they were more punctual though. Idea for another topic....rail system in Poland, including high speed proposed system
I have just returned from a rail-based holiday in Germany. The regional trains were reasonably reliable (mostly within 10 minutes of schedule) but seriously overcrowded throughout the day while the EC and ICE trains were shambolic for timekeeping. Less cancellations than last year but regularly 40 to 50 minute behind schedule. Also frequent platform changes in the larger stations which is no joke when you have a suitcase as most platforms seem to be two full flights of stairs above the concourse or subway and in the circumstances with 100 people trying to change platforms there's no time to queue up for the lift.
Last gripe beware of the combined rail air ticket. I purchased a Lufthansa ticket from Frankfurt which included rail travel from Cologne. This allowed 55 minutes between the train arrival (if on-time) and the aircraft departure. After my experience of Frankfurt on the outward trip I realised this was simply unachievable but when I turned up to catch an earlier train at Cologne I was told I would have to get in touch with Lufthansa to change the ticket to ride on an earlier train. So had to fork out for one myself.
Hi Reece! In the Czech Republic, where I am from, there is a new high speed line network to be built, when completed, it will be spanning the whole country. Generally, there are MANY interesting rail and public transoort project that would justify a video - the fabulous Prague Metro, the huge urban/regional rail expansion there, the airport rail link, the "Metro S" project (similar to the Leipzig City Tunnel) etc. And nice work on this one, as always anyway 😊
Hi! Thanks for the very nice overview of our German system! It is being badmouthed all over our country and it is nice to hear the view from a foreigner with knowledge of many different systems. Yes, mistakes were made, but overall I think we do not appreciate enough what we have.
What truly excites me are the plans to improve connectivity of Frankfurt. A new 300km/h line to Mannheim as well as a high-speed connector to Fulda and the Hannover-Würzburg line.
My favourite: Frankfurt Hbf will be upgraded to an underground go-through station for intercity services while keeping the overground terminus station (I think we learned from our Stuttgart 21 mistakes here). The next 10-20 years will definitely be exciting for rail lovers in Germany.
Great video!
What I noticed is the lack of east-west proper high speed lines in Germany. Hopefully this will be solved in the future.
I'm looking forward to the Stuttgart21 explainer video!
I'd love to see a Stuttgart explainer. I was there last year and I hated it. It is currently a nightmare for pedestrians with that 1km tunnel you have to walk through before you even get out of the station. Hope they get the construction finished soon
I hope the planned upgrades on Berlin - Rhine, Erfurt - Frankfurt and the whole Stuttgart thing will improve east-west traffic here in Germany.
Rome wasn't build in a day 🤷♂️
Yeah but the s and u bahns are mostly alright
Stuttgart citizen here. What do you want to know? I wrote a longer comment just a second ago you can check out under the video. About that tunnel, the situation is worse right now. As they are finishing the ceiling, they need the space for the cranes. So at the moment you need to walk around the whole construction area to reach the s-bahn, u-bahn or walk to the inner city 🙈 Currently the Deutsche Bahn says opening is early 2025. Things are looking pretty good already and they are actually posting regular updates on there youtube channel as well. But only in german as far as I know. I personally think the timeline might work out this time. About the project itself, I like it. I think it will change the look, shape and feel of the inner city in a really good way, for years to come. There will be a park area, where the tracks are located right now which will form a green lung threw out the city.
No ICE services run to Denmark, this was a long time ago.
But as soon as the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel is completed, there will be ICE connections again.
Yes, this line was run with the ICE-TD diesel trains, which were retired in 2017.
@@stephanweinbergerAh yes my bad! Excited for the new tunnel!
My first ride on the ICE was in 2019, as I began my family trip in Germany that summer. I took four rides then. I then took eight more rides on the ICE in 2024, as I went to a summer exchange program in Germany and stayed for an extra week after the program. These 12 rides make ICE the most used high-speed network by me.
The ICE also provided my longest rides on a high-speed train in terms of travel time. My first ride in 2019, train 513 from Frankfurt Airport to Munich, set the record at 3 hours and 35 minutes until my fourth ride in 2024, train 1157 from Koln to Berlin, broke the record by 22 minutes. That was also my first and only ride on a Sprinter, which is the fastest services.
My favorite model is ICE 1 because it gives me such a luxurious and comfortable feeling when it comes to traveling long distances. And I don't know whether I was lucky, as my longest delay on an ICE was just a mere 15 minutes on train 720 from Munich to Frankfurt in 2019.
The German rail network has always been the central one in Europe. After the war, the Deutsche Bundesbahn became the leading standard in integrating European railways, because of its centrality and its volume. Some political reasoning may also have played its part. DB led both the Trans Europ Express as well as the international freight network, with the axis Rotterdam-Genova as its backbone, through the Gotthard tunnel.
But since the rise of high speed networks, most national carriers, including DB, have become more internally focussed. International connections were downgraded and even lost completely(as illustrated by the downfall of the TEE and its successor Eurocity). The sleeper train network vanished completely, including super modern and comfortable Talgo trains acquired by DB in the nineties and the beautiful dark blue ECN. And this all happened in a time in which low cost airlines soared, convincing the last train travelers to abandon their beloved international trains. A perfect storm. Now that people want to return to international train travel to avoid flying (for environmental reasons), there are no more trains and the routes between countries are too slow. Innovation in the field of signaling and power have proven to be insufficient or implemented at a too slow speed.
The dirty little secret here is that it will be extremely hard to find enough demand for many cross border routes, especially when you look beyond the 'usual suspects' like Paris-London or any train leaving Brussels (the EU capital has taken well care of itself) and without interfering in the unfair competition with air travel, which is heavily subsidized. Building the 'missing links' proves extremely difficult, especially when major mountain chains and waterways need to be crossed, which happen to often be the natural borders of many states. Other (nimby-)problems appear in densely populated areas of which Europe has many, Paradoxically, Obviously, it is exactly those areas from which rising demand is coming.
Thanks Reece to let me help to make this video even better!
Cool video! An underrated aspect of train travel in Germany is how laissez-faire the system is with the riders. You do not need a reservation on any German train (except sleepers) and you can hop on any ICE at the the last second. In comparison with Spain, Italy or France, which do have the more impressive HSR systems, it is much more low-key, usually cheaper, and rider-friendly. You can even ride all over Germany with Interrail in the best trains without paying one cent of surcharge for reservations! Not to mention the DB website is the best option for rail planning all over Europe, much better than any other domestic site even for their own countries. I remember being in North Portugal looking up trains on the DB app because it was so much easier than consulting the Spanish or Portuguese rail planning apps.
Spain and Italy are only "impressive" on paper, they are a huge hassle in real life and spain in particular is veryyy centralized
@@LB-pj3dp What do you mean by hopping on in the last second? Do you mean, one can board a train without a ticket and pay while in the train? Or do you mean boarding using a railpass without a reservation? Or just how easy it is to buy a ticket on any station?
@@TinLeadHammer All of the above!
I actually just got back from Germany. Spent 2 weeks travelling the country exclusively only via public transit. S and U-Bahn, ICE and RE express trains. The S-Bahn and U-Bhan are great the speed at which they run their units puts Toronto to shame. The movement of people is monumental with how fast they are. The ICE trains were cool but you can definitely tell when they are on older tracks because they bounce more. They were rather expensive as well for 2 people but the probation Bahn Card was a super help. I would highly recommend one of those if your travelling to Germany for a short period to cut off the cost of transit between cities. Or if time isn't a factor the Germany card was $49 Euro for unlimited regional express trains. Its monumental leaps ahead of the Canadian comparable. Minus the ICE trains we almost never looked at the time tables and just went to the station and a train was there to get us to our destination in good time.
That code sharing thing with DB and airlines is REALLY useful. It is the reason why I fly Lufthansa. I can book a flight through the cologne train station to my destination. The ICE will take my straight to Frankfurt and the Frankfurt train terminal is also the airport. It is very quick to get to your flight from there. It also means if the ICE gets delayed and I miss the flight that Lufthansa takes care of it. That also helps when coming back because of the plane is late and I miss my ICE I can just take another one heading in the same direction.
This takes SO much stress out of flying.
It should also be mentioned that the ICE fleet will soon be expanded to include the ICE L (from Talgo). A high-speed route between Dresden and Prague is also being planned, with speeds of 200 or 230 between Dresden and Usti and 300 between Usti and Prague.
Oh dear, there is so much more to Stuttgart 21 resistance than just trees and historic buildings! I'm looking forward to a more complete video on it.
I mean I did mention a lot of the other key issues.
The Stuttgart 21 main issues is the losing of surface terminating tracks: if they only add new underground tracks instead to replace surface ones, it would have been a great project.
5:17 I love how everyone that passes by looks annoyed at the camera
7:39 did i hear this correctly? i'm all here for a Stuttgart explained🎉
Yes you did 🎉
There is also a high speed route planned between Dresden and Prague.
We will see when it will open. It is extremly useful - but yeah planing in Germany needs far over a decade :( And building a 40km tunnel... yeah
Indeed, though it was a bit too far out so I didn’t include
Last week - love how I can arrive in Frankfurt from Munich on an ICE train, then a few days later, use the same Frankfurt train station, go underground via escalators, and take the regional train (think GO train underground) to visit a cousin in Bad Homburg (trains every 15 mins/relaxing). Everything electric and quiet.
Wuhuuu, I‘ve indeed been waiting for this!! 🙏🏼
I Hope you enjoyed it!
In case your wondering why the first german high speed line Hannover-Würzburg is where it is. It runs around the old german east-west border. In the nowadays unified Germany you would plan the network differently.
Superb as always:) greetings from Stuttgart GER 👋🏻
Very well researched and explained.
This video came as such a surprise because I’m in Germany right now and was wondering when you’d cover the ICE 😂
Well there you go!
One thing a coworker mentioned is that the high speed trains and the low trains have to share the railways. So it a problem for regional trains when you to wait everytime that a high-speed train want to overtake them.
And don't get me started about freight trains
When talking about cities that might be able to use some upgrades Hamburg should be mentioned, its not the largest station, but across europe contesting for top 2 or 3 in number of passengers. The main issue with hamburg being, not only is there no space to expand to, but there isnt even a similarly central area to build a replacement. Covered rivers, marshy terrain and already constructed buildings make it hard to find a decent spot. Digging down risk problems with groundwater, going tall is hard because of bridges and getting to those stacked tracks. Its a very complicated matter
Being from Germany and having been on the ICE several times, I can say that it is a decent experience. I'm still amazed that we have a better HSR system than some of the leading countries in terms of wealth.
(Also, we often joke about the trains being delayed most of the time 😅)
if only it was just a joke... DB really needs some serious investments at all levels
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren. ICE 506 nach Hamburg Altona fällt heute aus. Wir bitten um Entschuldigung.
Hhaha! 😊😊
→ 2:42 "... or an upgraded city-center hub [image of Berlin Alexanderplatz]" - this station doesn't have a connection to the distance rail network at all - only regional and local trains stop here (the IC/EC/ICE trains on the east-west direction pass through without stopping).
→ 5:00 "As usual, Switzerland likes to remind people that train delays often originate internationally, including in Germany." - That's similar in Germany: For cross-border trains, one of the most often mentioned reasons for a delay is "Verspätete Übergabe aus dem Ausland" (delayed handover from abroad). Of course, this just means "We don't care to actually finding out the real reason".
→ It might be worth noting that also the next level of distance trains, IC (Inter City) (often called EC (Euro City) when crossing borders) are using big parts of the high-speed network, though with a somewhat slower speed. They also have the "white with red strip" design, though with a gray roof. (As well as freight trains, where this is possible without impacting the people traffic too much.) And some of the cross-border lines are also used by high-speed trains from the neighboring countries (Thalys, TGV, Railjet).
Great video and excellent to see you including more video of trains rolling while you narrate!
Looking forward to your video on Stuttgart.
The project with the train station downtown is huge. I forget if they had to change the architectural plans but they looked really cool.
Stuttgart has a good S bahn system- my experience.
The local train to Tuebingen, a university town 30 miles to the south, would take at least an hour. There are lots of small towns in the area that need service. So the locals can be really local. Don’t go at 4 AM lol.
It is a densely populated area - at least, in my opinion - and the terrain seems challenging. Lots of rolling hills and a river. Also a lot of industrial uses in my recollection. And I seem to remember a trackside vineyard on a hill.
Connections out of Stuttgart are not the easiest, it seems. To get to Strasbourg or Freiburg you have to somewhat go around the Black Forest, through Karlsruhe.
Stuttgart is somewhat in a corner of Germany - which may present its challenges, including connection south to Switzerland. As I remember, one of the main hubs for trains south is Horb, a small town. But, it’s a really nice place to be. I hope you get there. Thanks.
11:19 i was there several times with my family, i even spectated the trains from above. this is a very active moving place there.
4:01 Germany's notorious NIMBYism is also the result of Germany being biased in favor of building more autobahn/highway networks and less railway, since it's a country with a large and prestigious automobile industry (Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi and BMW).
You would think the NIMBYs would not want highways in their backyard...
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer In Germany for the most part only environmental activists (like NABU, BUND and Last Generation) strongly oppose the construction of new highway networks. Like I said most NIMBY's in Germany are really wealthy as well as being friendly towards the automobile (since they can afford some nice cars). They have no interest in railway networks since they usually don't use them.
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer they don't. They have the "everything stays like it is mentalities" (German Meme: "Alles bleibt so wie es ist!")
@@georgobergfell Nicht wenn es um die geliebten dicken Karren gibt, die die deutsche Wirtschaft (mehr oder weniger) am Laufen erhält, anders als die Bahn, die keinen guten Ruf hierzulande genießt, unter anderem auch, weil man es versäumt hatte, die Bahn durch diverse Maßnahmen für den Großteil der Bevölkerung "attraktiv" zu machen.
@@dinohermann1887 what are you talking about?? Of course NIMBYs oppose highway and other road projects all the time.
Thanks for the summary. Two little mistakes I have to mention: there is no plans to upgrade Hamburg-Bremen. And speed upgrade Hannover- Berlin is nowhere near construction.
Thank you for covering my country! Our high speed rail system is pretty good, but there is a lot of repairs that need to be done. And this really shows. Only 62% of trains make it in time (within 6 minutes) to their destination.
You'll need to plan in some extra time if you are travelling on routes with a lot of old lines.
I live in Kiel on the baltic sea coast and taking the train from here to anywhere really takes much longer than it should. These NIMBYs protesting any line out of Hamburg in any direction drive me crazy. Still dreaming of dedicated lines from Hamburg to Berlin, Hannover, Bremen+Rhein/Ruhr and mainland Denmark (with a branch to my home city Kiel) 🥲
Seevetal really takes the cake in this one as of late, such a small Kaff with nonsensical arguments delaying and endangering critical infrastructure for the entire north
@@purplebrick131 you're right. They are the definition of entitled NIMBYism. "We have 4 Autobahns and 2 rail lines in our boring suburban town and it works just fine, but a third rail line would destroy our town COMPLETELY so we have the right to completely cut off Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein FOREVER." I hate them, i have traveled that route like 10 times and at least 5 times there was some random absurd problem on the current main line that would not have had that much of an impact if there had been a second seperate line. Like it shouldn't matter if something happens between Lüneburg and Uelzen because it isn't even on the way between Hamburg and Hannover. But the Hamburg-Neumünster line with that absurd detour via Elmshorn has similar problems (just less NIMBYs because they don't even try to improve the line)
As a German, you forgot about delays. They are everywhere all the time. It's so bad, that it's genuinely surprising, when a train departs and arrives on time.
mimimimi
@@jorgjorgsen7528 I would have agreed, but we have hit 65% punctuality. That is bad.
not really no
Building new high speed tracks takes time for planning and building. I sometimes take the ICE from Leipzig to Munich. In 2015 the new line was opened, going from Leipzig to Munich via Erfurt, Bamberg, Erlangen and Nürnberg with a travel time of 3 hours and 15 minutes. Before that you had to go via Augsburg in a travel time of 5 hours 30 minutes... So the new line is a nice cut in travel time. BUT looking to our neighbour France, their TGV network is special, because it's separated from the local train network and only for high speed travel.
Ah at 10:20 I see you included footage from the Wiesloch-Walldorf train station, nice! I used to use that train station all the time between Heidelberg and Karlsruhe.
Once, I had train from Munich to Berlin. Suddenly they stopped the train in out skirts of Munich and announced "Sorry we are on wrong track" now the train has to go back to Munich and then we will take a different route. We were like wtf...they call it an advanced train but it can't figure out it right track.
I will be riding the ICE next month from Berlin to Paris. I’m a train enthusiast and it’s something I’m looking forward to. I’m making a vlog about it, I hope it goes well. Thank you for sharing
I hope you planned a time buffer at the station where you will be changing; likely Frankfurt, Mannheim or Karlsruhe.
@@raileon I definitely did.
One of the main reasons why Stuttgart 21 is controversial is that the new station has a much lower capacity than the old, thus actually worsening reliability. The current train station also is one of the train station causing the least delays on the network. Plus all the massive security issues with the new train station and the tunnels leading up to it. The tunnels to the station go through a type of rock that will swell if it gets wet, thus the tunnels have to be of smaller profile than usual, causeing issues if a fire were to break out. Because of other underground trains the station also is on a slope of around 5‰, therefore it will not technically be a railway station but a railway stop as the slope of the platforms would not be allowed for a railway station. It's a massive mess.
Stuttgart 21 suffers the same problem as the hamburg hauptbahnhof which has also 8 lines and this train station is overcrowded but recent they wanna improve it through more gates to bring the crowd to the lined instead of adding more lines like upgrading from 8 to 12 lines
In your overview at 5:30 you are missing an important addition to the core network: Frankfurt - Hanau - Gelnhausen - Fulda - Gerstungen - Erfurt.
Frankfurt - Hanau: New ICE underground station planned in addition to the overground station plus accelerated accces through tunnels (early planning phase)
Hanau - Gelnhausen: Upgrade to 4 tracks and 230km/h (constructions recently started)
Gelnhausen - Fulda: Dedicated HS line, connecting to the Fulda - Würzburg HS line (in permission planning)
Fulda - Gerstungen: Dedicated HS line connecting the HS line Fulda - Kassel with the already upgraded line Eisenach - Erfurt (in permission planning)
Otherwise a great video! Thanks a lot!
7:21 and the tunnels will need to be rebuilt many times because the rock will expand (it will absorb water and expand) and the station has a dangerous tilt AND is prone to flooding...
My small town closed its station and the closest ones are each 20 minutes away by car. One of them only has a single line that goes to the next bigger town over every small village known to man (its currently replaced by a bus they appear to have bought from som suspicious people because its the worst experience I've even had). The other one used to have an ICE go through that took you took you to Berlin but got replaced. Every way you wanna go, our need to travel to Stendal first.
I remember all my trains running late or just being cancelled at 10PM in Stendal with - 7°C and the Station Doors being left open and I wasn't even supposed to be there. The DB told me that i was free to use any train that got me home because off all the delays which was bullshit, because on the train home i got screamed at by the conductor because my ticket wasn't for this train. Thanks Lady. She only let me go because i pretended to be a pitiful girl on her way home to visit her sick mother (including me bawling my eyes out).
My journey to Berlin was even worse though. I had to get on like 3 different Regional Trains, even the Goddamm Ferkeltaxi to Rathenow which was squeezed full. And anytime i Travel in a Way which takes me to Bahnhof Uelzen i know the train will be late. Uelzen is the other closest bigger train station and i despise it with all my heart. Its the Hundertwasser Bahnhof with special design by the artist Hundertwasser. It's horrible to navigate, dark, musty, smells especially bad like pee and taking my mom in a wheelchair through there made me wanna die
Looking forward to the video about Stuttgart! :)
If needed, I could provide video footage of the Stadtbahn, rack railway, funicular and the heritage trams.
Zacke gang represent
Love the train sets especially the original ones! Great video!
Thanks for watching!
Lovely video, enjoyed it.
German Highspeed Trains drive very fast but are delayed anyways to ensure you miss your connection at which point you spend an hour or so at the station doing 0 km/h until the next train comes. Oh an if your trip is in the 2nd half of the day and long enough don't count on actually getting to your destination in the same day. This of course is the experience you get when you're lucky. If you're unlucky they strike for a week at which point walking doesn't seem so slow anymore.
Loved to see my local Karlsruhe Hbf in the video several times ❤
Great video. I would love a video on the UKs train system. Inside the UK its easy to get pessemistic, or sometimes optimistic (depending on what journey you take) about our systems, but id love to hear a less biased international view on how the UK is connected by rail!
Having spoken to several Germans, they feel DB's reliability has gone downhill to the point that they consider the UK's rail system to be much better. Their only complaint is just how expensive it is in the UK, it's incredibly cost-uncompetitive with driving and sometimes even flying (if you wanted to do London-Newquay or London-Aberdeen for example).
In Germany it's the same. It's become a standard small-talk subject here in Germany to complain about the railway when you meet somebody after travelling by rail. I really hate these people because we have it better here than maybe 90% of all the other countries.
@@ricequackers Newquay to London is a joke, costing often 5X to travel by rail than fly...
@@bananenmusli2769 yeah I hear a lot of people talking poorly about trains in the UK. I tend to find it fast, priced ok with a Railcard and reliable mostly traveling on the western main line. I think it is a completely different story in other areas such as the trans Pennine express.
And the UK havent an nationale operator .
You forgot the new ICE L, which will be introduced next year. In Germany we jokingly say L is for langsam (slow) because the Top speed is only 230 km/h. Looks rather like a replacement for the IC trains not the ICE. It will be the first ICE train without stairs at the entrance so people in wheelchairs can easily board the train.
Awesome timing. I'm going to a traintrip to Germany this vacation
I have heared so many stories from Frankfurt am Main Flughafen Fernbahnhof (yes that's the full name) mostly from my dad cause he was an Engineer who was responsible for the tunnels and connections in that area. Every time we drive along the A3 (the Autobahn cutting the train station off from the airport) he always tells a new story about his time there during construction.
Also I just like it when the automated announcements sais "Gleis ... steht ICE... nach ... über Frankfurt am Main Flughafen Fernbahnhof" It just sounds really interesting Idk I can't desribe it
I hate whenever my train runs through this station. There are always a lot of people with a lot of bags, so afterwards you have a full train and more bags than any train could handle.
@@_TeXoN_In the last decades, Deutsche Bahn forgot about passengers carrying substantial amounts of luggage. Former IC network with the old 1970s carriages had much more storage capacity for bags etc. When designing the ICE trains, apparently DB mgmt just thought of businesspeople using them, carrying not more than a laptop and somthing to eat.
It's also the Bahnhof with the worst acustics I've found so far. It's completely impossible to understand anything in there, due to the extreme echo having very reflective surfaces in weird shapes on the ceiling and walls
8:09 I guess Berlin to Leipzig and Dresden could use a 300 km/h line but since it’s already 200 km/h and with a time of 60 minutes fitting well into the clock face schedule, I don’t really see it happening any time soon.
Thank you for mentioning my Hometown Stuttgart ❤ I’d love to see your video about S-21 in the Future 👍
As stated, the system integrates really well with regional trains (if they are on time) and it’s often faster to do 100-200km sections on regional train’s rather than taking the shortest route to a high speed stop first
My favorite regional to high speed transition station is Halle (Saale) which is situated on the Berlin-Erfurt line north-west of Leipzig
Just like Stuttgart 21, the Deutsche Bahn is currently in the process to build a new through station underneath Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, which, as you mentioned, is a terminus style station for long distance transit. The new through station will be dedicated to high-speed transit only. This is part of the Deutschlandtakt, a public transit frame work by the federal government, that seeks to relieve congestions on the lines and improve punctuallity. It's projected that, upon completion, the new Frankfurt through station will improve punctuality by 18 minutes throughout the network.
Ok some notes:
Current lines
- On your diagram the Frankfurt to Nuremberg line is missing. This is one of the most important connections
- International ICE also run to Amsterdam (you even show ICE in the Netherlands in the Video)
- The connection to Copenhagen hasn't been operated by ICEs for years
Future lines
- There are also two planned high speed lines effectively connection Frankfurt to Erfurt via Fulda (the Frankfurt to Fulda part already is pretty far in the planning stages)
- The planned lines in the North head out from Hannover to Hamburg and Bremen (not from Hamburg to Bremen and Hannover)
- By now DB has begun to operate nearly all old "normal" Intercity-Lines with ICE Trains, but of course they are just as the old ICs on these lines
Trains:
- The ICE TD has left service years ago
I'm looking forward to the Stuttgart railways explainer as I went protesting against the project as a child.
So your parents used you for their protest?
@@carstenmoller2248 Nah it was probably the thing that made me love railways tho I still dont support the project.
There is another route to Paris via Brussels, though that is operated by Thalys/Eurostar which is basically SNCF's international division.
As someone regularly traveling between Frankfurt and Würzburg (at the corner from Nürnberg to Hannover) I just want to add that there is already a high speed line from Würzburg to Nantenbach (near Lohr so about 1/3 of the length between the two cities). The problem with completing the line is the build up area from Frankfurt to Aschaffenburg (property prices are quite high there) and the mountainous area from Aschaffenburg to Lohr (called Spessart) where locals are opposed of further development. Also there are laws making it harder to develop previously green areas that require you to sponsor a project for revitalising nature which makes it rather unattractive to finish the route.
From my german perspective this was a verry well researced video. THANK YOU!
Lived there for 20 years. Did frequent business travel for 3 years.
1/4 ICEs will be late. Delays are often > 1 hour.
My worst delay war 5 hours, where they dumped me off in Kassel and then told to wait 1 hour for another train.
I prefer the TGV network.
I'm surprised there's no planned high speed connection between Berlin to Warsaw via Poznań and Dresden to Wroclaw
This video is not complex, it also lacks a branch line to Czechia, which is already in the phase of geological exploration for a 25-26 km long tunnel under the Ore Mountains, which will help the old line in the Elbe Valley.
That's european union for you. Banning planes and cars but not providing a continent-wide reliable and integrated rail network....
I think the last time Europe saw reliable trains running from France to Poland, it was the work of nazis -_-
Hi Reece,
Wonderful explanation as usual
Would be interesting to see a video on the rest of Switzerland network, especially the Intercity one, I know it's not high-speed but would be great, especially since normal "still fast but not high-speed" intercity services are soooo underrated, IMO.
They do a big share of the work in rail travel, and are easier to implement for countries that are behind the curve, if dedicated HSR is not an option yet, to bring people on board public transport. (Like we are seeing with Via-rail and Amtrak).
Annnd I feel like a "nation-wide" Switzerland video is missing, so that would be killing 2 pigeons with 1 stone. 🙂
I wouldn’t say the Swiss services are underrated, people talk about them a lot!
@@RMTransit I meant more "normal intercity" service is underrated, as people are always raving about high speed lines.
Whenever I'm checking public transit in a city I always end up here so now I subbed , specially because you are located in my favorite city. Looking forward to your European trips, it's always interesting to see how someone from NA react to European public transits :)
8:06 You forgot the new route to Prag behind Dresden. Also a new Link for international railwayoperation connecting Berlin and Vienna via Prag. I would love to meet up with you in real Life to discuss more about international railoperation. You are inspiring. 🎉 Greatings Form Germany 😊
The original ICE3 was a joint development between Siemens and Bombardier. The newer ICE3s are a Siemens Velaro variant.
I do agree mostly. The core of german railway is very good. But a big problem comes with infrastructure, funding and modernization. The chance, that you have some minor or major problem on your travel is really high. The most common thing is, you don't get your connecting train because yours had a delay of like 40min. (yes I know, you can use your ticket for any available alternative, but the problem persists) and the App doesn't do a great job either. Very often it doesn't show some trains that could be a beneficial alternative, or it doesn't show delays fast enough. I already had a train where DB App thought it would be too late for the connection, then showed the connecting train having 20min of delay himself, only to revert everything 5min later to the point where the connecting train lost half of it's delay so it won't be available. Only to then update it with another 20min of delay. Who should know what's happening, when the system is that jumpy? Lane-changes in the very last second, faulty displays at the station itself. All in all it has many small problems so it feels like a complete mess, even though in essence it's a pretty good train service.
We were just there a couple of weeks ago. Love the ice train, Rode it in 2008 for the first time.