36C3 - BahnMining - Pünktlichkeit ist eine Zier - english translation
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN brings it up in any thread about German or European rail as a data-driven, entertaining analysis of why trains are late.
What it is
David Kriesel's 36C3 talk, in an English translation, analyzes a year of scraped Deutsche Bahn data covering every stop of every long-distance train in Germany. It explores delays and how punctuality is actually measured.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec sdoering · 2021-11 · on “How trains could replace planes in Europe”
There was this really great talk on the Chaos Communication Congress some time back on the punctuality of German trains. I searched for it and even found the English voice over translation [1]. [1]: [this video]
Strong rec btschaegg · 2023-05 · on “It will take years to get Deutsche Bahn back on track”
Obligatory mention of a great talk on the topic: "David Kriesel: BahnMining -- Pünktlichkeit ist eine Zier" (2019) English translation: [this video] Edit: Note: And that was still with better numbers than lmm posted.
Recommends DiogenesKynikos · 2020-11 · on “Virgin Hyperloop Has Invented the World's Crappiest High-Speed Rail”
The was a CCC talk about why the Deutsche Bahn has so many delays: [1]. It turns out that East Germany has great on-time performance, probably because all the infrastructure is new. But overall, Germany has to invest more in upkeep of its existing infrastructure. 1. [this video]
Cites netsharc · 2022-06 · on “The integrated timetable of Switzerland”
German Rail did that: translated presentation from German: [this video] (with a translator that sadly breathes into the mic...)
Cites DiogenesKynikos · 2022-07 · on “Deutsche Bahn’s Meltdown and High-Speed Rail”
At Chaos Computer Club a few years back, David Kriesel presented an analysis of the on-time performance of the Deutsche Bahn, based on a systematic scraping of their API.[0] One of the surprising things he explained: if a train never arrives at a station, it's not late, according to the Deutsche Bahn. 0. [this video]
Cites dav_Oz · 2023-03 · on “One rail ticket for all cities in Germany – 49 euro per month”
Don't expect German "Pünktlichkeit" on German railways, though.[0] The Austrian and especially the Swiss railroad systems are far superior. Since the "Bahnreform" of 1994 the infrastructure progressively deteriorated from the passenger's perspective. One hard fact: about 20% of the railroad network has been dismantled since 1994 (44.600km to 33.400km [1]). Way too much. Reasons for this are a confluence of excessive bureaucracy, brutal management style, powerful industry interests (think e.g. "Autobahn"), lobbying. Today's "Deutsche Bahn" as an entity is split into eight distinct divisions [2]; DB Schenker (global logistics and freight transport company) is by far the most profitable of the