this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
378 points (97.7% liked)

Europe

1482 readers
641 users here now

News and information from Europe ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in !yurop@lemm.ee. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)

(This list may get expanded when necessary.)

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @federalreverse@feddit.org, @poVoq@slrpnk.net, or @anzo@programming.dev.

founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Melchior@feddit.org 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A bunch of stuff. First of all the merger between east and west german railways happened in 1994 that was due to a lot or rail connections having to be rebuilt and a number of high speed lines were built or improved to Berlin. That however cost a lot. Then the German government was thinking about privatizing the railways. To do that a stock company was formed with the goal of turning a profit. So they stopped maintaining tracks and avoided new investment as much as possible for quite some time. In the meantime both passenger and freight railway demand in Germany increased a lot, while very little to no new track was opened. Also the ICE service was increased and unlike most everywhere else, it is run for the most part on improved old track and not new lines. Regional rail and freight run at roughly the same speed, if you consider the regular stops of regional rail. HSR runs faster, so other trains are either in the way or they have to move to the site.

As a result most of the German mainlines are at capacity or above it. As in there is demand for more trains, but the tracks do not have the capacity for it. So if anything goes wrong on any train, it results in a traffic jam, which causes delays for everybody else on those sections. However since long distance trains go through the entire country, nearly all of them do have to cross those sections.

The obvious solution is to built more railway and especially add high speed rail lines in parallel to the current lines. However NIMBYism is strong in Germany and when combined with a strong car lobby, it makes building new lines nearly impossible. Every single project ends up in a decades long planing stage, with mulitple law suits and even with construction you end up with stops, due to legal problems. For the most part the construction work is doing just fine, it is really just politicans being corrupt.

[โ€“] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

TY for the insight