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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

The only good examples inside of Europe of countries where you can get by train to almost everywhere, in time, are very far and few between.

Switzerland is of course in there, maybe Netherlands, maybe Belgium, not sure about Denmark, certainly not France nor Germany. Rail transport outside of Paris which does not involve the TGV is absolutely crap, meaning expensive (unless you purchase your tickets 3 months in advance or some crazy stuff like that) and it doesn’t get you to where you want, unless you want to get from Paris to one of the big other big French cities, but in that case you’d take the TGV anyway.

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My claim is not that public transport is perfect everywhere else in Europe, only that the preconditions for good public transport are much better in the UK than in most other countries, such as France or Germany, yet it isn't vastly superior. In my personal experience, public transport in the UK is definitely worse than in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, but I would argue it's worse than in Germany, France and even Sweden. Mind you, I don't restrict this to trains, buses make more sense in scarcely populated areas and their reliability tends to be highly affected by local politics.

The UK does have good public transport. It just doesn't have amazing public transport. I would disagree public transport in Germany is better. Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Ekeryone complains about their local system. What does the data show?

That 34.8% of long-distance trains were late in 2022. [0]

[0] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2022/fileadmin/pdf/dufe_2022.p...

> Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Statements like this don't make sense unless you take into account cultural differences in what "late" means.

In Germany people think that a 5-10 minute delay is unacceptable. In the UK trains are so frequently late and cancelled that when a train is 5-10 mins late, it's considered on time.

No that's not true. UK punctuality figures are based on actual lateness, not perceived lateness. If a train is more than 15 minutes late in the UK you're entitled to compensation on a sliding scale up to one hour when you're entitled to a full refund of your ticket.

I don't know about that, I take trains in the UK a lot, and the _vast_ majority arrive exactly when expected.

Spain's rail system was great during my (admittedly very short) visit.

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