Why Germany's once Excellent Railway got so BAD - DB ICE Velaro D Review
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- čas přidán 27. 04. 2024
- Follow me on Twitter / intercitysimon
Join me for a thrilling adventure aboard one of Germany's fastest high-speed trains, the ICE Velaro D. Experience an eventful journey marked by diversions, delays, and disruptions. Throughout our trip, we'll delve into the reasons behind the decline in the quality of German train services as we navigate the challenges of traveling on this iconic high-speed train.
Train type: Br 407 (ICE Velaro D)
Route: Düsseldorf Hbf to Frankfurt Hbf
Train: ICE 621
Distance: 260 km
Journey time: 2h53m
Average speed: 90 km/h
Price: From 39,90 €
Thumbnail picture from Cheng-en Cheng on Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
flic.kr/p/2iCQDTw
Watched this video while in a hotel, funnily enough, thanks to a DB cancelling my train mid-journey
now that's either just really ironic or rubbing salt in the wound
The closure of the high speed line was most likely caused by vandalism as i remember this happen not too long ago. In fact, it happened again in Bochum this friday. Thankfully they caught the thieves.
Y'all need to close your borders
Vandalism? What's going on?
@@mukundbalasubramanian1229 Wouldn't be surprised if it was sabotage. Ask yourself who would benefit from damaging German infrastructure?
Might have been the case! I checked the cancelation email and it said due to "short notice trackwork" but i guess that would be the follow up after vandalisim. Was recorded on 1st December 2023
I checked again and turns out the case i remembered happened this february. So they just replaced tracks and did some tunnel maintainance. Unfortunately for you, the line reopened the day after your trip.
Wasnt the closure of the high speed line due to someone stealing cables or another form of sabotage? That was around December 2023 if I remember correctly
Yup, officially it was discribed as vandalism and since the closure was for multiple days it was more than just cables being stolen.
It could very much be the case, i was not aware of this. I had an email telling me it was due to short notice trackwork, so that would likely be the follow up after cable theft.
2:41 “Platform 15 can be accessed by escalator and lift”, proceeds to use stairs.
Hhaha yeah, i am ussualy traveling backpack only with 2 working legs, but its good to point out for those who use these kinds of video to find out about accessibility :-)
@@Simon-AndersenOf course, it’s important to point it out 😅
Hi Simon,
I think you have described the state of the German railway network well. Not only do we prefer to build new motorways, we haven't spent enough on maintaining the infrastructure since 1999, even at EU27 level. So you no longer have to wonder why the DB has been running on wear and tear for years. I'm not even going to start talking about the delivery and software problems of the railway manufacturers. I work for Siemens and our experts estimate that this will continue for at least another 10 years. They haven't invested anything for almost 30 years and then I'm not surprised that they can no longer make rail projects palatable to the public.
yep, but to be fair to them, the government wanted it that way.... and people voted for 16 years more or less the same government, no wonder why not happend..
@@hra4242 Don't forget closing the greenest type of power plants.
@@mozomenku Tell that a former resident of Chernobyl or Fukushima. Or visit Sasse where they store the remnants the waste nuclear fuel... It is not green. It radiates around like crazy.
@@Canleaf08 Chernobyl was a disaster due to construction errors and saving money on everything. USSR knew about problems with the reactor design yet they choose to conceal the report. Reactors used nowadays are much safer and have different construction and contain much more safety features. Majority of the waste can be reused and the remaining part is safely stored underground where it doesn't bother anything. Also, compared to other energy sources, the waste and contamination it much much smaller, as well as the place needed to create 1000 MW. Last thing is that Germany nowadays often must rely on energy from their neighbours and that includes France, which uses nuclear power as over 70% of their electricity production.
Deutschland hatte 16 Jahre Verkehrsminister der CSU, einer Splitterpartei aus Bayern 🍻, welche die Schienen-Infrastruktur in ignoranter Weise vernachlässigt hat, so dass es jetzt zu dieser Katastrophe gekommen ist..
The hard product itself is the best high speed train out there imo - ICE trains are more spacious than options like the TGV, modern and comfortable, with good design inside and out 👏. Will be cool to see what direction the ICE 5 will take!
Totally agree! - Its a great train, but unfortunately not enough to save the overall expirence of long distance travel in germany with db atm.
I’d say the Asian systems, especially Japan is better with wider cars and guaranteed window seats, the Velaro CN sold to China has wider cars than the Velaros in Europe as well
Regardless of the delay, at least the accommodations on the Velaro look comfy
Nicely made review, thanks for sharing! 👍
We love to travel by train in Europe and it always is our first choice.
Unfortunately you can't rely on DB anymore, their ontime performance is a pain ever since years.
We still prefer them much over flying e.g. but you need to be careful and sometimes very flexible when planning on connections. We find their ICE trains to be very comfortable and their Staff onboard always friendly and helpful.
Hopefully german politicians finally wake up and do their job. In the end it's them causing all the trouble!
You summed it up great! Lets hope it can inprove over the coming years so once again DB can be viewed as reliable.
wow, i'm early for once!
anyways, nice video as per usual simon.
to be honest, i like the velaros due to their design haha
I am very impressed with how well Germans patronize their high and slow speed trains. Thanks for sharing.
To all the British people: DB is basically just like TPE, but if it was your national operator
My tactic has sadly become not to go to places in Germany anymore if it requires a change of trains the same day. From Switzerland, I take a direct train to a place in Germany, stay in a hotel for 1 or 2 nights, and then a direct train to my final destiny. The bad thing is that I have to do the same thing again, when returning. And it is an expensive way to avoid stress.
I mean if you depart early enough in the day you can just go with the flow miss a connection or two and still arrive at some point that day
My less costly and similarly stress-free technique for navigating the Deutsche Bahn chaos is just to get going early and, whenever I miss a connection, I just take the next train that will move me in somewhat the right direction. Works well for NRW and Lower Saxony.
I tend to fly nowadays between The Netherlands and Denmark or Switzerland. Yes, it is expensive but fairly reliable.
Yes the infrastructure delays are responsibility of the owner of the infrastructure. Unfortunately for DB the infrastructure is owned by a company called DB Netze AG
I never thought we'd get to a point where the "efficient" German DB would get so bad it would make the UK rail network look punctual. They really need to get themselves sorted out.
I was on the high speed rail line between Koln and Munchen. They cancelled our train outside of Munchen but only put the announcement over the speaker in German. So after all the German speakers got off we realized we needed to switch and tried to pile a completely full ICE train into another completely full ICE train. So we ended up standing for the last hour and a bit to Munchen.
I was in Bremen this past week and I was supposed to take the train from Bremen to Dusseldorf at 05:40. At 04:00 they cancelled my train and it was only by pure luck that I realized there was an earlier train to get me to Dusseldorf in time for my flight. But that diversion resulted in an hour and a half extra of train time which was less then fun.
When it works its great but the DB definitely needs to keep investing in its infrastructure, train sets and service collectively.
ahh i was expecting some model railway action 😉
It's so ironic but normal that the best Siemens Velaro experience is not in Germany.
We booked a journey in 1st Class from Cologne to Basel (on an SBB train). It left one hour late and the service was unexpectedly terminated at Karlsruhe, supposedly due to a casualty on the line ahead. We were told to board the ICE on the adjacent platform. It was already overcrowded and we ended up standing in the bellows between two carriages. It travelled on the line where the casualty was supposed to be but got as far as Offenberg where we were told there would be at least a 100 minute delay before the next announcement. I spotted a local train going to Freiburg im Breisgau. We took that and our ICE then passed us on route. Freiburg platforms were overcrowded. It was chaos! Eventually we caught a local train to Basel. We were 5 hours late getting to our final destination. DB are rubbish IMHO.
You should have mentioned/added the second part (previous video)of your journey as well
You can watch that here czcams.com/video/gO89Xm11nLw/video.html I like to split it up to make videos about 10-12 minutes long :-)
Hvad med at lave videoer med hvordan man køber billetter i de forskellige lande? F.eks Schweiz er et mareridt at finde ud af. Tyskland har bahnkarte, hvad er det? O.S.V. Dernæst samler du dem i en playliste, efterhånden som de bliver klar.
Bare et forslag.
Gert
Tak for forslaget, men jeg har slet ikke nok viden om det i andre lande en Danmark til at kaste mig ud i at lave en guide.
Please take a Look at the Stations in Kassel.
Maybe in the future!
Unlikely, but if you ever end up in Oldenburg (Oldb) there's also a model railway there.
Take an Amtrak train in the US and you will be happy to arrive on the scheduled day.
I have actually, none of them were more than 15 min late :-) But yeah Amtrak does not have a great record in that regard either
This is common. It has always been like this and I am certain that you are aware of beforehand.
czcams.com/video/wXjhszy2f9w/video.html
For all German speakers, the band WISE GUYS brought to the point the whole misery after the privatisation of the Deutsche Bundesbahn under Chancellor Schroeder and DB CEO Mehdorn in this hilarious song. For everyone who doesn't understand German, the video says it all as well.
That song is about 20 years old...
I seem to have missed where you had a serious issue with the train itself, as the title suggests. Not a fan of that kind of clickbait. Yes the service is terrible at (many) times. The 407 is mostly not part of the array of problems.
I should probably have used railway instead of train in the title for clarification. As mentioned at the end of the video in my conclusion the train itself is fine, but in general traveling long distance with DB atm is pretty terrible :-)
@@Simon-Andersen Ah yes, that makes sense :D
With years of experience (and the help of zugfinder,net or similar apps) i have learned to avoid trains that are often delayed. Through that, i usually only face delays of less than 30 minutes. I can only recommend looking up your options before journey on these websites like zugfinder ^^
1:16 As long as you use the main entrance yes. There are Sbahn station underpasses that smell less of piss than the left side entrance.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
You have one of the best high speed rail system in the world and you're complaining try the US
Ah yes because its worse elsewhere, it means that only 55% of your trains arriving on time suddently is great 🙃 - Also yes i have, and none of my amtrak trains were more than 15 min late. Or changed a week in advance, or diverted.
just a few more years and Germany will also have the FRECCIAROSSA train
Atp one is better off flying
tbh i don't know what you mean by their success? :D
Look at the passenger numbers year after year. That success.
@@f1mbultyr that's not because DB, it's despite their "effort". Mostly because more and more people in germany don't want to travel by car anymore....
@@hra4242 "Mostly because more and more people in germany don't want to travel by car anymore...." Back that up with numbers and not observations.
@@f1mbultyr That success is relative. German rail passenger-km/capita are good but below Swiss, Austrian and French ones.
By rail, the distance between FRA airport and Dusseldorf is 207 km, mostly on high speed tracks. Lufthansa would not have 4 daily Airbus returns between these cities if DB service was reliable.
Rising passenger numbers, more trains run than ever before etc. Not so much DB as a company being a sucess, but more the german railway as a transport option being popular despite its issues atm.
So not the trains are bad!
I should probably have used railway instead of train in the title for it to be more clear. As mentioned at the end of the video in my conclusion the train itself is good, but in general traveling long distance with DB atm can be pretty terrible :-)
What is so bad on this train?
The Deutsche Bahn...
@@Canleaf08 So not the trains are bad!
@@Marcus_Oelschlegel The train is awesome tbh, it is just DB's service and upkeep of stations ...but tbh DB's hands are tied, without national budget they cant do anything
DB has enough money. That is not the problem!
Please avoid filming people, it is not allowed to film strangers without explicit permission in Germany.
lol go ahead and sue him, Klugscheisser
What? Are you afraid that Simon will steal their souls with his "filming contraption" - This is by far the biggest hogwash I've ever heard.
Content like this is in fact legal.
DB is the worst train operator in central and western Europe.
Take it you haven't been to the UK? 😂
@@johnkelly1083 it’s worse, believe me😂
@@altavelmcnamara Despite the current issues, Germany has a far superior and more comprehensive rail system. The infrastructure in the UK dates back to the victorian age and is pretty much falling apart. We can't even build a high speed line from London Euston to Manchester. It's embarrassing. I don't think that you guys are doing too badly.
Nonsense.
@@C20F your mum
What utter garbage
Look, i love u, honestly. BUT PLEASE stop saying "munshen", I'm not even german, but that is PAINFUL to hear, it's not "sh" it's "h". Ok anyway bye 😘
Is it the same place as Munich?
Focus on high speed trains was a strategic error - a battle against planes that can't be won not even ecological and carbon whise (HS infrastructure is concrete intense and expensive) while the infrastructure at large is stuck in the 19. Century. With the budget for highspeed they could have converted the whole network to speed.