• @randombullet@programming.dev
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    12 minutes ago

    Deutsch Bahn would like a word.

    I often take my car because it’s so damn unreliable.

    Not once, not twice, but three times I’ve sat on a train for 2+ hours without moving within the past 2 years.

  • @33550336@lemmy.world
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    8 minutes ago

    Buying BMW E46 with LPG is always a good idea. Small car (according modern standards) with great driving fun. Somehow you need to get to the train station, especially in rural areas.

  • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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    31 hour ago

    no fast railways in the US at all, hyperloop delayed cali long enough til trump was able to stop it in his first term. it would solve alot of employment locaitons issues like biotech, and tech hubs. which are situated outside of major freeways and highways and major metro areas, even cars have a trouble navigating to.

  • @LordWiggle@lemm.ee
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    359 hours ago

    Although there are many improvements to be made, like international euro rail connecting the capitals, better prices, a reliable DB and most importantly EU standard track system, I love our euro rails.

    But I’ve gotta confess, the fact the US train is called Marc is kinda cool.

    “Hey, I wonder where Marc is. Is he coming?”

    “Nah men, Marc is completely derailed again. He burned down an entire town and he’s toxic AF.”

  • @quoll@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 hours ago

    …that’s the shanghai maglev

    edit: it was built by siemens though, so get a few euro wank points.

  • @QualifiedKitten@discuss.online
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    189 hours ago

    As an American living in a region with halfway decent (by American standards) public transit, I feel like I hear more comments aligned with the European side than the American side. If public transit has literally any downsides, that’s justification enough to drive for so many people.

    • @LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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      68 hours ago

      Although the US and Europe are nearly identical in area, Europe’s population centers are far more uniformly distributed. Big cities in America are mostly around the edges, with a vast, sparsely populated area in the middle. Most intercity train service in America is in that fringe, where the spacing between cities is more like in Europe.

  • circuitfarmer
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    5711 hours ago

    Japanese transit users: “Don’t worry, we can grab the next one. It will be here in 48 seconds.”

  • @privsecfoss@feddit.dk
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    11 hours ago

    The problem with trains is they are public (under)founded. The rich and powerfull with political influence don’t want working public transportation because less carsales, oil, gasoline etc.

    Which explains why Musk prevented a high speed train in the US with his hyperloop. We all need to buy EV"s which have most of the downsides of traditional cars.

    When we could have clean, fast and comfortable public transportation.

    EDIT: Spelling.

    • @grue@lemmy.world
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      1410 hours ago

      That’s not a problem with trains; that’s a problem with the rich and powerful having political influence.

    • @JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1210 hours ago

      Which is why he prevented delayed a high speed train in the US. To my knowledge, they are still constructing it.

      Just checked: it’s still underway. 119 miles currently under construction. From Bakersfield to Madera, with most of the rail near Madera completed.

  • zout
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    16516 hours ago

    As a European I have to say, you are very optimistic about our train schedules.

    • Cethin
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      58 hours ago

      I think watching Jet Lag let’s you see the full breadth of transit systems pretty well, because the whole game relies on it. Japan is amazing. A lot of Europe is good enough that you can get around, some great and some not so great. The US is so bad I don’t think either team bothered taking a train when they did the show there.

      • horse
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        34 hours ago

        It’s funny (and accurate) that they keep getting fucked over by Deutsche Bahn.

    • @PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      7515 hours ago

      The blind hope that somewhere in this world there is a functioning public transit system is all that keep me going some days. Let me have this

      • @iii@mander.xyz
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        5315 hours ago

        Tokyo I’ve heard. For sure not Europe. Halve of the scheduled trains didn’t run today in Belgium.

        • RQG
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          4415 hours ago

          Switzerland is pretty good at well with trains.

          • @ahornsirup@feddit.org
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            2015 hours ago

            It’s a problem of reliability. If you need to be at work at 08:00 and your train is regularly late or getting cancelled, you can’t take the train to work.

            • @Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              513 hours ago

              Not to mention even a small delay could mess up the timing of taking the next bus/train. For not too busy routes it could mean waiting in the cold for half an hour… If that next bus has a good delay you could be there for almost an hour. (Totally not speaking from personal experience)

              • @jqubed@lemmy.world
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                611 hours ago

                When I lived in New York there was a place I’d go sometimes that required 2 trains and a bus. On the weekdays it took about 40 minutes, but on weekends with the cumulative effect of less frequent service it was typically 2 hours, or longer depending on how quickly the first train came.

        • PlzGivHugs
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          11 hours ago

          Halve of the scheduled trains didn’t run today in Belgium.

          Only half were cancelled? Man, that sounds nice.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness
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        711 hours ago

        Japan is the MVP here. I live there and I literally have never seen a train not arrive exactly at the scheduled time. However “public” transport is privately owned so… Uh… Yeah, tradeoffs.

        • ivanafterall ☑️
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          310 hours ago

          Given that it works so well, what are the negatives due to being private? Is it expensive to ride?

          • NoneOfUrBusiness
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            59 hours ago

            Is it expensive to ride?

            Yeah. It also stops running at around 11 or 12 so if you stay out late you just might find you can’t get back home.

      • @isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 hours ago

        I’ve been in Vienna from time to time, and it’s pretty good, 365€/year for the pass that gets you buses, trams and subways with unlimited access and no turnstiles anywhere, you just go and enter

        Schedules follow work hours and go from a subway every 2 minutes during peak hours to one every 15mins late at night

        You have night line buses for weekdays and on Saturday night public transport doesn’t shut down

        Coverage is good, you almost always have a bus or tram line less then 5 minutes of walking

        There are bike sharing places with 20 bikes each ~1km apart and they cost 60 cents for half an hour, or e-scooters in the designed locations which are basically everywhere (but being owned by companies they cost so much more then everything else)

    • @Artyom@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      As an American, I would say the same…except about the American train schedules.

      • @criss_cross@lemmy.world
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        712 hours ago

        A German intern came to our american city and was flabbergasted that the trains here ran consistently.

        I had a laugh since I always assumed it’d be the opposite.

    • @ultranaut@lemmy.world
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      1314 hours ago

      As an American, this is exactly correct. The last time I tried to take Amtrak the train literally did not show up and they told us they had no way to contact it and didn’t know where it was. After waiting many hours with no change in status I finally gave up. The last time I actually rode Amtrak it was multiple hours late and cost about the same as a plane ticket.

  • @doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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    5214 hours ago

    As an American, I don’t have access to trains, buses, bike lanes, sidewalks or even a shoulder on the road. The last time I tried to walk home from the tire shop two miles away, three people stopped to offer me a ride because it is that dangerous. I live inside the 275 loop that runs around Cincinnati.

    • @Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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      10 hours ago

      Yeah, my “Public Transit” option on google maps is entirely greyed out. This is my daily commute to work:

      It’s always entertaining to see the Europeans go “lol just ditch your car, it has to start somewhere” like it wouldn’t require me to move my entire family across town, (and pay 3x as much rent to live in the city…) Like I don’t even have the option of taking public transit, because there are no connecting lines between my home and my job. Literally none. The nearest bus stop is almost as far away as my job, and it’s in the opposite direction.

      And to be clear, that 2+ hour walk would be on a highway with no sidewalk. I’d be dead on day 1. If I wanted to avoid the highway, the walk would be closer to 4.5 hours; The highway is the only direct path.

        • Natanox
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          310 hours ago

          To be fair, Google Maps sucks ass in this regard. If you ever visit Europe, never EVER trust it for public transit information. Always look on the native apps and websites. Google Maps regularly offers me routes that either don’t exist anymore, not at that time or day of the week, unnecessarily require a group taxi somewhere or are simply extremely inefficient. Instead of a 95min travel it wanted me to go for a route that took 145 minutes the last time (luckily I knew it was bullshit).

          Even FOSS apps that may acquire travel data through rather novel means will provide more accurate information than the billions of dollars available to Googles car heads.

      • @grue@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        require me to move my entire family across town, (and pay 3x as much rent to live in the city…)

        Do it.

        (I’m an American BTW.)

    • @LordWiggle@lemm.ee
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      49 hours ago

      I live in Utrecht, one of The Netherlands’ larger cities. I don’t even have a car anymore. I can reach any place in the city by cycling in 15min max. Planning a trip with Google maps often shows cycling to be as fast or even faster than by car. Amsterdam by train is 30min, train leaves every 10min. I can take my bike in the train or take a public transportation bike from any train station. Cars are stupid.

      • @doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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        13 hours ago

        I lived a year in Nijmegen when I was younger, and later another year in Duesseldorf, so what you’re describing isn’t foreign to me. But where I live now there are no options other than car. If you don’t own one you need a friend with one or an Uber.

        • @LordWiggle@lemm.ee
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          12 hours ago

          Damn, that sucks. I never have to worry about traffic, I have no time delay when traveling during rush hour by bike. More people on bikes means less cars, less traffic jams. I don’t understand why other countries move away from cars, there are only benifits and no downsides switching to a stronger public transit and cycling infrastructure. It unclugs traffic so businesses have faster travel times, there are less accidents, the city is cleaner, there is more room to build as there is less need for parking space, road maintenance is cheaper, the cities get a better feeling for being in as people are invited to be in the streets instead of their cars. There’s more room for greenery, which has a mental benifit as well as rainwater management. Kids can play on the streets safely again instead. It’s not hard to do. Rotterdam was rebuilt after the second world war when it was wiped from the map by German bombing. They built it up like American cities, completely car focused. They completely changed it to bike friendly because of accidents and clogging, making a very shitty city a very nice one.

    • @VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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      210 hours ago

      I did this math recently. To walk to work would take me either a 2 hour walk, a 17 minute drive, or a 45 minute bus ride.

    • Elvith Ma'for
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      611 hours ago

      Deutsche Bahn will definitely proof that public transit in the EU isn’t necessarily…. there? Working? …

    • @PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      3216 hours ago

      Wait, you guys have trains?

      Depending on whether the stars are right. Or whether you need to cross the tracks - there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.

      • @MrVilliam@lemm.ee
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        1915 hours ago

        there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.

        This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute. The exception is within big enough cities like DC and NYC to get from one side of the city to the other or anywhere between. Sure there are some trains that go between cities, but they’re largely unreliable because passenger cars yield to industrial freight, and so people are less inclined to opt for them over planes or cars, and so there are fewer trains available to go wherever you’re going in the window you’re trying to go. So you book a flight instead.

        I’d take a long train ride over a road trip any fucking day. I don’t understand anybody who would rather drive than chill and read a book or play games or watch movies or nap.

        • @PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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          2015 hours ago

          This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute.

          Yet massive amounts of goods are shipped long-distance via truck anyway, clogging up highways and polluting far more per-ton and per-mile moved.

          Truly the worst of both worlds! USA! USA! USA!

        • @0ops@lemm.ee
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          18 hours ago

          Exactly, it’s not that the US doesn’t have trains, there are plenty. Lots of relatively small towns have rails going to or through them. The problem is that only a tiny fraction of them are passenger rail.

    • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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      1416 hours ago

      Oh yeah, we have so many trains. They go everywhere, we have a very comprehensive network of them

      Oh wait… Did you mean passenger trains?

  • Sakura
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    2314 hours ago

    I am here to represent the germans. The country where the only thing we agree about is, how fucking shit our trains are

    • @Tja@programming.dev
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      612 hours ago

      I havent seen one company where “train didn’t come” isn’t a valid excuse for bring late. Like, no further questions.

      • @khannie@lemmy.world
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        311 hours ago

        There’s a classic that Irish rail used to pull out of their bag of shite excuses until they got slagged to death over it:

        Leaves on the track.

        No joke. C’mon now lads. In fairness though the train service in Dublin and inter-city is pretty reliable and reasonable.

        • Natanox
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          310 hours ago

          Sounds like the Irish version of the german winter chaos. The very moment the first snowflake drops it’s total chaos, trains being terminated left and right due to an old railway switch that still saw Adolf freezing shut again.

        • @kartoffelsaft@programming.dev
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          410 hours ago

          My understanding is that leaves contain some compound(s) that, when wet and under the extremely high pressures that train wheels provide, becomes one of the most effective lubricants we know about. In other words, the brakes literally won’t do anything because you’ll slip-n-slide your way at the same speed you were going before.

      • @Two2Tango@lemmy.ca
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        110 hours ago

        I was late for a hair appointment because I missed the bus, and I swear they wrote it down in my file because every time I went back, for the next year they were like “So… Did you come by bus today?”

        Also yeah no problem if your train doesn’t come once - but if it happens more than once it’s going to reflect badly even though it’s out of your control. You’ll start to get the comments “You should take the earlier one!” I travelled by bus with 2 transfers to college and it was ROUGH.

        • @Tja@programming.dev
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          210 hours ago

          I used it every time it happened, very rarely when I just slept in. My boss also came by S-Bahn so he was late from time to time as well. Of course if we had an important meeting or a customer appointment we came in a whole hour early, to compensate for 3 train failures, which never happened. But if you came 20 minutes late on a regular Tuesday nobody cared that much (boring office IT job).