Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

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I own a car and that’s single reliable mean of transportation in/around Munich. Airport line causes me always the stress since I am not sure if I am in the right part of the train or I will go to Freising. I double check it, triple check. Repeat dozen times and can relax only when train enters airport area.

As you mentioned - additional tracks through the city center are re-planned for 203x, but with current handicap on all planing and execution levels it will realistically be finished at 2050. It makes public transportation completely unreliable since the city is heavily overcrowded already. Absolutely the same story with S7 extension from Wolfratshausen to Geretsried. No way to build anything before 2040.

Let’s face the true, Germany lost grip on infrastructure projects. The fight against car goes on without offering any alternatives. In theory my journey to the office takes 10 minutes more on the train than with a car. In reality I don’t know where train gets stuck and for how long.

> Airport line causes me always the stress since I am not sure if I am in the right part of the train or I will go to Freising

That is usually apparent IMO, what do you find stressful? Having trains that split is quite common in my experience.

> It makes public transportation completely unreliable since the city is heavily overcrowded already.

That's very true. And with the 9-euro tickets, rush hours are a nightmare (and it is extremely hot these days).

> Let’s face the true, Germany lost grip on infrastructure projects.

I'm afraid that's very true as well. Coming from Italy, I expected big things from Germany, but HST is way better in Italy, to my surprise.

On a brighter note, it seems that in the last years they are accelerating on infrastructure again, both local and national. It will take years, if not decades, to see the results. However, as the says goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

Let's also call out the origins (at least partly) for this mess. Which is the obsession with a balanced budget, mainly originating with former finance minister Schäuble. The last 20 years of extremely low interest rates would have been ideal to use essentially free money (government bonds were typically below inflation) to build German infrastructure. Instead Schäuble used weird anologies to your neighbor who should not spend over their budget (the German expression is Milchmädchenrechnung) to convince people that taking out loans is a bad thing for governments. Such a lost opportunity, Germany could be so much further along in their transition to renewables, could have one of the best public transport systems in the world and that essentially and no cost for the loaning the money. Instead it has a dependence on Russian gas, destroyed renewables industry (which used to be World leading), and public transport infrastructure which is desperate for investment just when we are coming into a recession.

This reminds me how a lot of value is actually collectively created and corporations are just there to efficiently make use of government provided infrastructure. Some people got this idea that private individuals create all the value but if that were true everyone would be self employed. A debt brake basically means less gov bonds which means the same money is bidding up fewer bonds. The idea behind this is that private lending will pick up because of the lower interest rate, the irony of course is that due to the zero lower bound, there is no real point behind lower interest rates.

Fully agreed, and same goes for the Autobahn. Foreigners think it’s some super high speed no limit highway, but over 50% of the time you’ll be under a very conservative speed limit due to ongoing construction. Of course, you never actually see anyone working, it’s like they start the project and just leave it for months at a time.

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