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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

When it gets crowded in Tokyo trains you are literally pushed against each other, back to front people against people, specially bad in summer where the aircon cannot keep up. That's only at 9am normally though, and so I do not consider jobs that make me be in the office at that time (9:30~10 is an order of magnitude better). WFH has been a blessing to Tokyo.

So it was funny when I visited my sister in a rural town in England, and there was a festival so we took the bus to get there. It was obvious the bus was more crowded than usual, and people were grumpy, but from my point of view it was almost empty; people were within an arm's distance from each other, which for the locals probably used to less than half the people that was very crowded.

I wonder if the same will happen on the trains in Germany. Japan is used to this though, and they have powerful ventilation and aircon systems to alleviate the situation in summer.

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There are long distance trains like the RE (or ICE, which is not covered by this ticket) which are designed around everyone being seated, and there are commuter trains like the S-Bahn which are designed to have enough seating space for normal hours and lots of standing space for rush hour. The former are very uncomfortable when overfilled, the latter are designed around it in terms of ventilation, number of doors etc.

I've been in a couple of people-shoving-level crowded commuter trains when traveling to popular consumer trade fairs, and it was ok. Most people took it as part of the experience.

The biggest issue will be people trying to cross the country, packing 40 year old REs beyond their limit in the hottest time of year.

The more busy Sbahn lines (e.g. Ring Bahn) absolutely did get crowded enough that you couldnt even always get in pre-covid at peak times, and I suspect it will be even worse in the next 3 months.

People in Germany are typically not very contact friendly and since COVID it got way worse. People here rather stand than sit next to a stranger, sometimes even across. The trains will be beyond crowded this summer (especially the ones going to the sea), so it will be interesting to watch how people will react. I think though the ticket will mainly be used by younger people which are typically more open to this.

If the recent street scenes in Frankfurt are anything to go by I'd say people will be just fine, as long as there will be something to celebrate/look forward to :) (either a fantastic football win, like in Frankfurt, or waiting to get to the seaside, like in your example).

> they have powerful ventilation and aircon systems

... well ... the ICEs AC is known to fail regularly at elevated temperatures :-)

Well, they were designed to survive everything except an every-100-years summer (36°C sustained outdoor temperatures) back in the 80s, which now happens to be every summer.

Even the trains ordered in 2000 were designed for an every-100-years summer (40°C sustained outdoor temperatures) which now some regions are hitting every year as well.

The issue isn’t the ACs, the real issue is climate change ;)

But per Carnot, maintaining a fixed temperature differential against a fixed thermal resistance is cheaper (requires less work) at a higher temperature (1/(1-(Tcold/Thot)) is the carnot-limited "coefficient of performance" for a heat pump). So theoretically they should be able to maintain the design differential even at higher outdoor temperatures, causing indoor temperatures to raise from ~21°C to 26°C comparing the "still works at 35°C" and "40°C happens regular in $current_year".

But of course people using the coolers are keeping the temperature constant (not the differential, and therefore pushing the pumps harder).

Well, then maybe those need some self-protection to not overexert themselves when the temperature gradient is too steep.

Don't you know that there are seats on long-distance trains?

Unless people start sitting on each other's lap the aircon capacity is not going to be exceeded.

In German long-distance trains, seat reservations are not mandatory and capacity is planed while taking into account that some passengers might not get a seat. Most regional trains (which is where this ticket is valid) don't even offer seat reservations.

This article seems to be discussing local mass-passenger trains going from town to town in Germany, so I assumed it was trains with seats + passengers standing. Is that not the case for the purpose of this article?

On these trains you expect a seat outside rush hour.

It will be a less comfortable seat than a long distance train.

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