This article communicates what this is about very poorly, so I'm not surprised a lot of people are asking "what is so special about this train?".
The answer is: Nothing. Many ICE trains have the capability to go that fast* - and some already surpassed these speeds on test tracks decades ago. It's really nothing special to make a train go these speeds.
What this test was supposed to show is that the real track (not a test track) between Erfurt and Leipzig/Halle can now support trains going that fast. Having compatible tracks is the real challenge (and cost sink) for high speed transport, not the trains themselves. Creating high speed track that is safe and usable in year-round conditions while being affordable to build and maintain is surprisingly hard.
* ICE-3s reached up to 368 km/h in tests, though ICE-4s are designed for more economical speeds in the 200-300 range and currently limited to 265km/h in software for safe operation.
dlcarrier · 4h ago
Also, the passenger miles per unit of energy drops geometrically, as speed increase linearly. Most of the loss is aerodynamic, so you either need a hyperloop tunnel or wings to take you into the literal stratosphere, to avoid high fuel burn at high speeds, so even if you could run the train at 400 km/hr along the whole track, it would be unlikely that any operator would do so, on a recurring basis.
perihelions · 4h ago
> "geometrically"
It's only quadratic. Aerodynamic drag force ∝ v^2, so aerodynamic power dissipation ∝ v^3—but travel time ∝ v^{-1}, so that cancels out back to ∝ v^2 energy per km.
(I don't know if this was your intent or the opposite, but "geometric" is a synonym for "exponential", which this isn't).
ffsm8 · 2h ago
TIL
> So in your example (1^2,2^2,3^2,…), the growth is quadratic (a type of polynomial growth), not exponential. The term "exponentially" is often misused in everyday language to mean "very fast," but mathematically, it specifically requires the exponent to be changing.
chmod775 · 4h ago
I don't think cost is too much of a concern for ICEs. They are already a higher-priced option that competes with plane travel for many destinations.
You can take RE trains at virtually no cost between any two cities you can dream of, yet people en-masse still happily fork over a hundred bucks to save 3-4 hours with an ICE train.
wuschel · 3h ago
There is a distinct difference in quality of ride in ICE trains when compared to RE trains:
- For some reason, the luggage compartments in many regional RE commuter trains are an example of drug induced circus design. People can not fit larger commuter bags in there
- The seating is less comfortable
- ICE trains have priority in terms of railway usage
- The passenger group is more friendly and respectful on the ICE trains
- Great restaurant service
- ICE are faster. I can travel in 1h from Frankfurt to Cologne.
If you need the configuration for work (speed of travel, working space), then ICEs are clearly superior and worth the cost. I cringe every time I have to get into RE trains. Not because I can not handle it, I am well travelled, but because I know what I can in the other trains.
(Full Disclaimer: I spend a lot of money for the BC100 every year. It is an essential component of my life).
3D30497420 · 3h ago
It may not be just 3-4 hours difference, it could be a very significant difference in convenience. For Berlin to Munich, I'm pretty sure there's no single RE alternative, so you're probably transferring 3 or 4 times as well.
I'm sure in some cases, an RE is a bit more competitive with an ICE, but in plenty of others you're asking for a pretty unpleasant time. (And this is from someone with a Deutschland card, making RE trains "free".)
interloxia · 4h ago
The Wikipedia page has a reasonably concise overview of the project.
From a passenger perspective, a reduction of about an hour from the scheduled journey time for the long distance connections is pretty good.
> DB und Siemens Mobility haben bei Testfahrten einen neuen Geschwindigkeitsrekord für die Strecke Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle erreicht
> Der ICE-S der DB Systemtechnik wird hauptsächlich für Test- und Messfahrten eingesetzt. Er dient dazu, neue Strecken zu testen, die Infrastruktur zu untersuchen und verschiedene Hochgeschwindigkeitsprüfungen durchzuführen
The latter paragraph explicitly states the point of this specific train is to test new routes and to analyze the infrastructure.
I think, like usual, it's a case of people reading the title and then going off to write a comment.
chmod775 · 4h ago
> I think, like usual, it's a case of people reading the title and then going off to write a comment.
Yes, that's poor communication. You need to read the last half of the article to really understand what the news is about. The title should be "405,0 km/h auf Schnellfahrstrecke Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle in Testfahrt erreicht". Note that this omits mentioning a specific train.
trueismywork · 3h ago
Germans typically expect you to read full article before commenting. So for them it's not bad communication at all
Wurdan · 5h ago
Isn't it also true that that area around Leipzig has been a thorn in the side of DB since the fall of the wall? I think I remember reading somewhere that the infrastructure in that area isn't ideal for high volume and speed of trains (due to stretches that only have a single track and a lack of guarded/signaled level crossings IIRC)
fjfaase · 7h ago
I fear that the general public in Germany will not be praising this achievement. The once efficient and punctional trains in Germany have deteriorated severely in the past years due to lots of delayed maintenance causing lots of delays and even regular cancelations of trains. Also the road infrastructure is suffering from delayed maintenance.
lqet · 4h ago
> The once efficient and punctional trains in Germany have deteriorated severely in the past years due to lots of delayed maintenance causing lots of delays and even regular cancelations of trains.
The main cause (often somewhat hidden behind the term "decayed infrastructure") is that there are too many trains on too few tracks. There are many reasons for that. I think the main ones are:
* Political pressure to have more trains, without an adequate increase in infrastructure capacity (trains are cheaper than tracks and can be delivered faster). For example, political pressure utterly destroyed the reliability of the local rail system in our area, because the number of trains per hour was increased by a factor of 2-3, with only a minimal amount of new tracks (the majority of the network is still single-track). Apparently, the system worked in simulations under near-perfect conditions (no delays, few passengers, no technical problems). So let's build it! The chaos that ensued during the first few months after the network opened again made national headlines. Another example: the highly overloaded Rhine valley line between Mannheim and Basel was proposed to be upgraded to 4 tracks in 1964. In 1970, the project was scheduled to be finished in 1985. Currently the (ambitious) goal is to finish the project in 2041 [0]. The original line (270 km) was finished after 17 years in the 1840ies.
* On regional and local lines, a tendency to increase train frequency and to decrease train capacity (more trains, but shorter ones). I suspect this is also because of political pressure ("your station now has 4 trains per hour!!"), but it doesn't make any sense. A short train which can hold 150 passengers occupies exactly the same amount of "space" (blocks) on the tracks as a full-length train with a capacity of 1,200 passengers, and they require exactly the same amount of personnel.
* Privatization of DB on the early 90ies, with political pressure to be profitable. Tracks are expensive to maintain, so those parts of the infrastructure that could be classified as "redundant" were dismantled. Now they have a network with little redundancy, which is great from a short-sighted business standpoint, but terrible for reliability.
> The main cause (often somewhat hidden behind the term "decayed infrastructure") is that there are too many trains on too few tracks.
Do you have a citation for this?
The people I know from the DB bubble are telling me that while some places have not enough track (e.g. the infamous Frankfurt-Mannheim/Riedbahn), but the everywhere problem is that there's just fault over fault over fault in tracks (often switches, but even tracks themselves) and trackside equipment.
> […] the number of trains per hour was increased by a factor of 2-3 […]
Even this I'm not quite willing to accept without citation; the railway timetables in the 70ies and 80ies, especially after the oil shock, were quite dense.
lqet · 3h ago
> Do you have a citation for this?
I don't, this is just my personal experience with passenger rail in southwestern Germany. The smaller lines with 1-2 trains per hour are usually extremely reliable, while the lines on crowded tracks are usually delayed, or cancelled completely. Note that many of the reliable lines I regularly used over the past 10-15 years ran on track equipment from the 19th century, some still with wing signals and switches operated via pulleys. (Anecdotally, I never experienced any technical problems with this old equipment as a passenger, the technical problems usually started after modernization).
> Even this I'm not quite willing to accept without citation; the railway timetables in the 70ies and 80ies, especially after the oil shock, were quite dense.
The factor of 2-3 was for my local network (which was converted to an S-Bahn network a few years ago, and a 30 minute frequency was introduced, with 15 minute frequency during peak hours). Some parts of that network only had 1-2 trains per day from the 70ies to the mid-90ies.
eqvinox · 2m ago
Mhm. I'll absolutely agree some infrastructure is at its limit/oversubscribed, but I also think you're generalizing a bit too much from your own experience without data to back it up.
Btw. Wooden sleepers laid in the 19th century have completely rotted away by now; it's impossible for the line track itself to be that old (except very slow speed shunting tracks, maybe.)
gcatellani2k · 3h ago
And with the introduction of ETCS the number of trains can theoretically be increased even more, as the distance for safe operation between the trains can be reduced thanks to it.
I agree on all points though: the German Railway is in a predicted crisis and has very little to do with problems inside DB itself but from regulations stemming from the owners (the German Government). Without money to invest in new infrastructure and its maintenance nothing can get better, no matter what DB does.
pjmlp · 5h ago
Agreed, nowadays I have to schedule train exchanges to have at least 30 m between them, and even so, I managed to miss connections.
DB is doing their best work for having people reaching out for cars.
While you might get stuck in traffic on the motorway, there are usually workarounds as soon as you get the next exit point, while being stuck on an train stopped in the middle of nowehere with a full train excedding passanger capacity because "pick random excuse", and reservations being optional, isn't really motivating to keep traveling by train.
attendant3446 · 7h ago
That's exactly it, it's not the new top speed they need, they lack efficiency. And it's not just Deutschebahn. For example BVG, who runs busses and U-bahn in Berlin is even less reliable.
simianwords · 6h ago
I think higher speeds can help efficiency. For example it can help catch up a train that has been delayed.
danieldk · 6h ago
West European rail is very full, so rail use is carefully coordinated, since trains of vastly different speeds (e.g. ICE vs a regional train) use the same tracks.
If an ICE is, say, 15 minutes late, they cannot just drive faster to catch up. The schedule went on, and at that point there may be a much slower regional or intercity train on the same trajectory.
This is why ICE delays tend to cascade. It starts with a short delay, the ICE gets stuck behind a slower train, increasing the delay, etc.
The solution is better maintenance of tracks and trains, adding more rail capacity, adding redundancy, etc.
Of course, these are all much more expensive than an ICE speed experiment for PR.
simianwords · 5h ago
This looks technically correct but let’s exaggerate the speed up to drive my point. Let’s assume trains are 2x faster now than before. You can now either reduce the time and pack the schedule or use the extra “x” time for catching up when needed. Where does this logic break?
scott_w · 3h ago
> the ICE gets stuck behind a slower train, increasing the delay, etc.
Right here. Those slower (older) trains don't magically get any faster just because the train behind it sped up.
> pack the schedule
You actually can't just double it up because faster trains need bigger gaps between them, just like driving on a motorway. If the train in front needs to slow/stop for whatever reason, you don't want the train behind smashing into it at 400km/h because it was tailgating.
prmoustache · 5h ago
If it is the same as in Switzerland, the solution is in helping people get the health care they need. Most time I got annoying delays when I was living in Switzerland was because of a "personal accident" which 99% of the time meant someone had deliberately jumped in front of a train.
adev_ · 4h ago
> If it is the same as in Switzerland, the solution is in helping people get the health care they need. [...]
Switzerland SBB/CFF and the German DB can not be compared, not even from far.
The Swiss trains are amongst the best in the world in term on punctuality.
Delays barely exceed few minutes most of the time. Every connection is scheduled to be done < 5min. The usage is smooth like butter and It works like a Swiss clock.
At the opposite, German trains in the eastern part are barely on time and give you an almost Soviet experience for the regional one: The trains are old, poorly maintained, like the track itself and the service suffers of it.
The only place in Western Europe I experienced train to be worst than in Germany is currently in Hungary where there were actual soviet trains.
Even the freaking French SNCF with their legendary strikes tend to be more punctual than the DB.
holowoodman · 3h ago
France has a separate high-speed train network, so speed differences between high-speed (TGV) and low-speed (freight, low class passenger) trains don't cause inefficiencies.
Switzerland doesn't have high-speed trains, only low-speed ones. And all timetables are carefully tuned to half- or full-hour station distance intervals that all trains on a track take at the same speed ("Taktfahrplan").
Germany has the worst of all those worlds: No Taktfahrplan (because it probably would be impossible due to the larger and far more complex network), high- and low-speed trains on the same tracks, and only some sections of dedicated high-speed rail that drive up the cost but still have shared stations and sections with low-speed rail so that punctuality goes down when the tiniest thing goes wrong.
adev_ · 53m ago
> France has a separate high-speed train network, so speed differences between high-speed (TGV) and low-speed (freight, low class passenger
Yes 100% right. Japan has the same where the Shinkansen uses dedicated track. If I do not say a mistake, China does the same too.
The fact it never has been done in a modern country like Germany with a dense high speed train traffic like the ICE is clearly a sign of planning deficit from the authorities.
holowoodman · 31m ago
It's just a difference in aims and circumstances. Japan has multiple train companies operating different networks, so a separate network was the only thing they could build. France accepted the compromise that high-speed TGV stations are far outside of the city areas, like airports, which makes nominal travel times fast, but the first and last miles will always be slow local trains to the city centre. Germany wanted ICE passengers to arrive at the central train station of a city, so using the existing train network at least partially is the only possibility. China has larger distances and no preexisting dense network, so building separate and dedicated is easier. Also, they maybe don't fuss about tearing down a few buildings and disowning a few home-owners who are in the way of their new dedicated high-speed route and station.
adev_ · 14m ago
> Japan has multiple train companies operating different networks, so a separate network was the only thing they could build
The Shinkansen initial network and separated tracks have been built at an age where JRails was still a single centralized company.
The main reason was to create a network with a focus speed and punctuality. And to be fair, it was the right choice and pretty revolutionary at the time.
attendant3446 · 4h ago
The trains in the post-Soviet region may be old, but surprisingly, they are rarely late. I'm only talking about the post-USSR area, can't say much about the Eastern Bloc in general.
timeon · 4h ago
> The only place in Western Europe I experienced train to be worst than in Germany is currently in Hungary where there were actual soviet trains.
As someone from the region, since when is Hungary 'Western' Europe? We are happy when acknowledged as 'Central' but this is new to me.
adev_ · 2h ago
Good point, I meant mainly 'within the EU' here.
detaro · 4h ago
It of course happens in other places too, but the Swiss are somewhat standout in how much they have their other operations in order. It's funny in a sad way that international connections into Switzerland actually get limited because the Swiss don't want other operators fucking up their internal schedule constantly.
pixelfarmer · 6h ago
It can, but it requires the track to be free in front of it and being allowed to go at the required speed to catch up.
simianwords · 6h ago
Yes but it’s a strictly better situation to be in although your point is valid.
eptcyka · 6h ago
Do you imply that trains would normally run slower than what they can safely achieve?
tonfa · 5h ago
With clock face scheduling (like in CH and planned for Germany) they very much do since schedules are optimized to align with periodicity.
On some Swiss lines it's fairly common to have trains recover their delay at departure (which also avoids cascading impact).
Everything always runs at 80% down to even 50% for normal 99% of the time operation. Not just trains, everything.
Propelloni · 4h ago
What was the old chestnut? A traffic jam is a highway at 100% capacity? Something like that, can't remember who said it. Niels Pfläging perhaps?
simianwords · 6h ago
i don't know where i implied that but it is well known that this is the case in order to give buffer time.
attendant3446 · 4h ago
I was late to reply, but as others have noticed, delayed trains can't always "catch up" with the schedule. ICE trains can accelerate to 405 kph, but regional trains using the same rail can't.
holowoodman · 3h ago
Higher speeds reduce efficiency.
The most efficient use of the tracks would be to limit all trains to the speed of the slowest train that travels a route. Then you can have minimal distances between trains.
Also, faster trains are less fuel-efficient, quadratically with speed. So a slowdown would help the environment and the throughput. The only thing it wouldn't improve is passenger happiness ;)
masklinn · 6h ago
It is a pretty limited achievement as-is: ignoring maglevs, a tgv test train reached 575 kph back in 2007, and China had test trains reaching 487 in 2011.
China’s next-gen is being deployed with goals of a 400kph service speed.
morepork · 6h ago
Also a German ICE test train was clocked at over 400 km/h back in 1988
Mashimo · 5h ago
If I understand it correct, this was also a 10 year old train.
westpfelia · 5h ago
Exactly this. The only people who will care are hardcore train people, and even then everyone is so crushingly disappointed with DB I doubt they mind much. I mean even at 405 km/h the train will STILL be an hour late.
blobbers · 7h ago
Interesting; America seems to be suffering the same fate. It takes municipalities years to fix highways. The main highway running through Silicon Valley, 101, has been under construction for more than a decade and is in dire need of improvement.
It seems the network of roads built in the 40s, 50s and 60s just can no longer be done efficiently.
Propelloni · 6h ago
> It seems the network of roads built in the 40s, 50s and 60s just can no longer be done efficiently.
Of course they can, we have not lost that capability. It's not a matter of efficiency but effectivity. Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands. Today's level of traffic far exceeds the anticipated level of traffic at the time of construction. Germany sees this all the time, esp. with regards to bridges. Maintaining a road or a bridge to be effective at supporting the original traffic levels is easy but under today's load would require constant maintenance to not deteriorate immediately. Those constructions need to be upgraded which is hard to impossible to do in situ.
Let's take a well-known construction in Germany, the Leverkusener Brücke an der A1. It was originally built in the 1960s for a traffic level of 40,000 cars (and trucks) per day. It was upgraded and refurbished over the decades (meaning almost constant construction work happening) to a level of 100,000 cars per day. It wasn't enough, in 2016 about 120,000 cars crossed the bridge per day. At the same time trucks got about 30 % heavier from 1960 to 1990 and we all know that passenger cars got heavier, too.
So the whole bridge was replaced, which took 7 years, ending in 2024. During that time traffic was rerouted over two nearby bridges in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The Cologne bridge was so badly damaged by the additional load that it had to be partially closed down and now is up for refurbishment or, maybe, replacement. Network effects at work ;)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: we are actually better at building stuff than our predecessors but the demands put on our constructions are much, much higher. I don't dare to say if our capabilities have grown as much as the demands require.
cyberax · 5h ago
> Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands.
Citation needed.
As I see it, the US is still riding on the coattails of 1960-s road construction. We should be doing more of it, in fact, not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets.
Fulgen · 4h ago
The Netherlands proved you can do bike lanes quite well, not every country has to be a nightmare for life quality like the US aspires to be.
Kim_Bruning · 4h ago
Naive intuition says adding more roads and lanes would finally solve the bottlenecks, right? And it does, briefly. But after a little while it's back to bumper to bumper. That’s induced demand [1]: when new capacity just encourages more driving.
Counterintuitively perhaps, bike lanes, road diets and public transport actually work better. Give people other ways to move around, and you take pressure off the road system, making traffic better for everyone. And that includes the drivers.
I would like to state that good bike lanes and trains also have induced demand.
The Netherlands and Switzerland, have demand for more of both (as well as more demand for car lanes as well)
It is just that trains and bikes are much more efficient in terms of land use.
The 3 lane road in front of my house is "good" for 16,000 cars a day. The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage.
So when a train system has more demand/use than expected (e.g. leman express in the geneva region) there are more options to increase throughput (in the leman express case double level trains) that require less new infrastructure to be build.
When new infrastructure is required, limitations of space mean that a 15 year period from plan to implementation is normal. Which means infrastructure which has more head-room is preferred over quickly saturated ones.
To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity.
ekunazanu · 5h ago
> not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets
If done right, human-centric infrastructure can create much better urban environments than car-centric ones.
prmoustache · 5h ago
Bike lanes reduce congestion. Do you prefer being slowed down by people riding bikes?
Propelloni · 4h ago
You are talking policy, I'm talking material science.
cuu508 · 5h ago
More roads? More lanes?
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
> America seems to be suffering the same fate
Not uniformly. New York's LIRR (90 to 95% [1]) and Metro-North (99% [2]) feature on-time rates that rival the Swiss (93% [3]).
You might want to look into what they define as being "late".
> A commuter train is considered on-time by the LIRR if it arrives within 5 minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled arrival time.
The second source doesn't say, but let's assume it's the same as for LIRR, i.e. 6 minutes.
It's also unfortunate that the SBB doesn't immediately tell us the metric, but I happen to know it's 3 minutes (more specifically 2 minutes and 59 seconds).
In other words, the LIRR permits a delay of twice the time as SBB for it to constitute late. The S-trains in Copenhagen now has a punctuality of 97% using a 3 minute metric.[0]
Is on time counted as time at every stop, or just the terminal. It’s easy to fake the terminal times with little impact by padding the timetable. Being on time at every station is far harder.
Not sure how you compare a small simple system like Lord which is pretty much one line with a few branches with an integrated multi-national system like the entire Swiss railway either
Svip · 4h ago
The answer to your question is "it depends". Some also do weighed calculations, where it's "per passenger", which means trains that have a high passenger load being late have a larger impact than one with few passengers. At least in Denmark, where I am most familiar (though I expect most of Europe to be similar), it's per stop.
As for the LIRR, it seems it's only the terminal station that counts:
> Thus, a train is considered late only if it arrives at its final destination six minutes or more after its scheduled arrival time.
holowoodman · 27m ago
Which leads to the common trick: If a train is delayed, it will often skip the last stop and turn at a station before the last. So the train was cancelled and not late at the final destination, therefore doesn't affect the punctuality statistics.
And yes, in Germany this happens and is reflected in rising "cancelled train" statistics. KPIs for Deutsche Bahn managers haven't caught up yet ;)
kelnos · 6h ago
Not sure I understand your point; GP was talking about highway maintenance and you're talking about trains.
philwelch · 6h ago
That’s largely a California problem. Here in Texas we are building highways on top of highways.
dmoy · 6h ago
The Texas interchange stacks are terrifying if you're not used to them. The first time I went up a five level stack I legit thought I was going off the edge of the road into the sky or something, and was gonna die. I was not prepared lol.
prawn · 4h ago
Just out of interest, can you point me towards one on Google Maps? (Curious non-American.)
philwelch · 6h ago
The interchange stacks are wild but we are also really into double decker highways. All of which also have frontage roads so that’s practically triple the amount of road.
dheera · 6h ago
Meanwhile our trains in the USA run at 50-100 km/h and are nonexistent in most places, so it's still an achievement.
doener · 4h ago
This is the main point of the news:
"The Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle route was used for the record-breaking journey without any modifications. According to Nagl, this shows that infrastructure investments create a solid foundation that lasts for generations. The insights gained will help with future renovations and the development of new high-speed trains.
The ICE test train used was a Velaro Novo test car from Siemens Mobility. Thomas Graetz, Vice President High Speed and Intercity Trains at Siemens, explained that the test runs provided important insights into acoustics, aerodynamics, and handling. The Velaro Novo is set to establish new standards for capacity, economy, and efficiency.
Dr. Hiie-Mai Unger from DB Systemtechnik led the measurements with the special ICE-S test train. This train is equipped with extensive measurement technology and collected data on the interaction between train and track."
This part is still misleading: "The ICE test train used was a Velaro Novo test car from Siemens Mobility"
The test train used is a set from the late 20th century. So old that its regular brethren are already scheduled for retirement. This is the last generation of ICE that was still using separate locomotives (and with that, limited traction) instead of powered wheelsets distributed all over the full length of the train. The only thing Velaro Novo in this demonstration is that they inserted an unpowered prototype car into the trainset.
The theoretical assumed Vmax of this old train should be 440 km/h. The fasted actual speed was 406,9 km/h back in 1988. The test itself was focused on the Velaro Novo:
* 15 percent less mass
* Up to 30 percent less energy required (I guess that is on focus of this test)
* Target speed 250 between 360 km/h
* 30% less maintenance costs
* 10% more seats
I like the concept of the Valero (ICE3) the design with the engines below the floor of passenger cabins is elegant.
The press text is unfocused and seems "Marketing". The DB probably cares more about the fact, that the ten year old track is maintained in good condition. The biggest problem of DB is bad maintenance of tracks and trains. Caused due to the attempt to make it a profitable stock company and weird split-up of tasks between sub-corps and the state as fallback. It should have been remained a one public state railroad not focused on earnings. Sins of deregulation and privatization of the 90ies.
PS: Interestingly Deutsche Lufthansa is known for the well in-house maintenance branch. That's why they're happy with the B747-8. Not so big as the A380-800. The maintenance of four engines doesn't require them much effort. Here everything is in one major corporation and the need for good maintenance quality is intrinsic.
WorkerBee28474 · 9h ago
'ICE' here means Intercity Express [0] and not internal combustion engine.
Nowadays, it also means balaclavaed, secretive, lawless, paramilitary disappearance "police".
pfannkuchen · 5h ago
Hey, if that’s what it takes to get the Americans to build high speed rail.
KronisLV · 8h ago
Recently took some of these in Germany, was a pretty pleasant experience!
It was a bit odd how the ticket prices seem to fluctuate a lot over there based on timing (like 20 EUR if you buy half a week ahead of time, closer to 40 EUR nearer to travel date, at least in my case) but I much preferred taking the train over flying.
hummuscience · 7h ago
For every train, there is a fixed number of tickets per price category. So sometimes, you can still find cheap tickets ("super sparpreis") a day before because thag specific train didn't have many bookings:)
namibj · 6h ago
Like a train ticket that spans the year break (depart December 31, arrive January 1).
dheera · 6h ago
Aw hell they picked up on that stupid American capitalist crap?
I worked in Germany in 2005 and back then everything was fixed price per kilometer for each train class, and you could get rail passes of sorts and get on whatever the hell trains you want during their validity. I'd take train roundtrips after work just to watch sunsets.
red_trumpet · 5h ago
The price concept discussed above applies to long-distance trains. Local trains are still different, especially if you have the "Deutschlandticket" (germany ticket) you can just hop on any local train you like.
jksflkjl3jk3 · 5h ago
Dynamic pricing based on availability is much more efficient, which is a good thing.
krior · 6h ago
> Aw hell they picked up on that stupid American capitalist crap?
Surge pricing is not an uniquely american concept.
pjmlp · 5h ago
They follow a similar system like plane tickets.
Depending on the train you get, either you get a really nice travel, or some experience that doesn't reflect the plane like price ticket, and might leave you with some bad taste regarding train traveling.
Having canceled trains, crowded ICEs, either due to missing reservations as they are optional and anyone can get into one provided valid ticket, or because passagers from a canceled ICE needed to jump into an already crowded one, missign connections by 5m, being stuck in the middle of nowhere, only some WC work across the whole train, they decided to not have a wagon bar on a hot summer day,.....
The fun of train traveling, all great when stars align.
hedora · 6h ago
And also not the organization currently force-relocating innocent civilians to detention camps.
I wonder if the Germans will end up having to rename the train system at some point.
krior · 6h ago
> I wonder if the Germans will end up having to rename the train system at some point.
You are vastly overestimating the relevance of this issue for the German public discourse.
chgs · 4h ago
Of what issue - the reliability of trains? It’s pretty high, db is a laughing stock.
A high speed pr stunt isn’t much interest sure.
adwn · 5h ago
It might be almost inconceivable for many Americans, but the daily lives of people in other countries doesn't revolve exclusively around America's internal politics…
pfannkuchen · 5h ago
You know, now that I think about it there is a conspicuous absence of organizations with the initialism SS despite the letters being so common. Maybe they will!
tootyskooty · 5h ago
The ICEs are already plenty fast, the issue is they share rail with the much slower and less reliable RBs. Any delay cascades and you can't just make ICEs go faster to catch up.
On a €/(avg. ICE speed) basis likely makes more sense to invest directly in RB.
detaro · 4h ago
While DB is obviously involved, this test train included cars from a new design that Siemens primarily is aiming at the export market (E.g. US Brightline West, various projects in Asia, ...).
westpfelia · 5h ago
Yea. Who cares if you can hit 405 km/h if you are just going to get stuck behind a train carrying goods for 2 hours unable to move.
KingOfCoders · 8h ago
Amdahl's law in effect - which is the reason trains in Germany top out at 300 and most at 250.
simonebrunozzi · 7h ago
Re-read it, as I didn't recall it properly: [0]
"the overall performance improvement gained by optimizing a single part of a system is limited by the fraction of time that the improved part is actually used"
Thanks for the quote, Germany has (too) many stops on the ICE lines (often for political reasons) and those are the limiting factor, not the top speed. The best train in Germany is Berlin->Frankfurt, not because of the speed, but the "Sprinter" version does not stop.
shiroiuma · 6h ago
There's another factor in HSR speeds: track degradation and maintenance. If you run the trains faster, they cause more wear to the tracks and require more frequent maintenance, and also tolerances on the tracks need to be kept tighter. Germany already seems to have trouble doing maintenance on time, so running trains faster would make this worse.
KingOfCoders · 5h ago
Yes, the German rail services prefer to build huge new trains stations instead of better tracks. We're waiting for 120->160kmh for years now, always promised, always moved to the future.
And probably the tear is bigger on curvy lines which most lines in Germany are, compared to e.g. China.
WastedCucumber · 4h ago
It was probably still a half hour late for departure.
floydian10 · 3h ago
Would be great if they were on time and closures of important routes didn't took 9 months
zerof1l · 2h ago
I don't think Germans want faster trains, they want punctual ones. How about trying to set a record for trains being punctual?
sMarsIntruder · 6h ago
The preliminary AV tests in Italy in early 00s were above 500km/h, so I’m not sure what to think.
Kunsang · 4h ago
That is impressive for a train that runs on Windows 3.11, or did they already upgrade a away qqqqqq1qao Windows 95?
snambi · 5h ago
What is special about this train? There are trains that already surpass this speed.
pjmlp · 5h ago
I guess something positive to talk about, instead of the usual delays and infrastructure problems.
The answer is: Nothing. Many ICE trains have the capability to go that fast* - and some already surpassed these speeds on test tracks decades ago. It's really nothing special to make a train go these speeds.
What this test was supposed to show is that the real track (not a test track) between Erfurt and Leipzig/Halle can now support trains going that fast. Having compatible tracks is the real challenge (and cost sink) for high speed transport, not the trains themselves. Creating high speed track that is safe and usable in year-round conditions while being affordable to build and maintain is surprisingly hard.
* ICE-3s reached up to 368 km/h in tests, though ICE-4s are designed for more economical speeds in the 200-300 range and currently limited to 265km/h in software for safe operation.
It's only quadratic. Aerodynamic drag force ∝ v^2, so aerodynamic power dissipation ∝ v^3—but travel time ∝ v^{-1}, so that cancels out back to ∝ v^2 energy per km.
(I don't know if this was your intent or the opposite, but "geometric" is a synonym for "exponential", which this isn't).
> So in your example (1^2,2^2,3^2,…), the growth is quadratic (a type of polynomial growth), not exponential. The term "exponentially" is often misused in everyday language to mean "very fast," but mathematically, it specifically requires the exponent to be changing.
You can take RE trains at virtually no cost between any two cities you can dream of, yet people en-masse still happily fork over a hundred bucks to save 3-4 hours with an ICE train.
- For some reason, the luggage compartments in many regional RE commuter trains are an example of drug induced circus design. People can not fit larger commuter bags in there
- The seating is less comfortable
- ICE trains have priority in terms of railway usage
- The passenger group is more friendly and respectful on the ICE trains
- Great restaurant service
- ICE are faster. I can travel in 1h from Frankfurt to Cologne.
If you need the configuration for work (speed of travel, working space), then ICEs are clearly superior and worth the cost. I cringe every time I have to get into RE trains. Not because I can not handle it, I am well travelled, but because I know what I can in the other trains.
(Full Disclaimer: I spend a lot of money for the BC100 every year. It is an essential component of my life).
I'm sure in some cases, an RE is a bit more competitive with an ICE, but in plenty of others you're asking for a pretty unpleasant time. (And this is from someone with a Deutschland card, making RE trains "free".)
From a passenger perspective, a reduction of about an hour from the scheduled journey time for the long distance connections is pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt%E2%80%93Leipzig/Halle_h...
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnellfahrstrecke_Eltersdor...
> DB und Siemens Mobility haben bei Testfahrten einen neuen Geschwindigkeitsrekord für die Strecke Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle erreicht
> Der ICE-S der DB Systemtechnik wird hauptsächlich für Test- und Messfahrten eingesetzt. Er dient dazu, neue Strecken zu testen, die Infrastruktur zu untersuchen und verschiedene Hochgeschwindigkeitsprüfungen durchzuführen
The latter paragraph explicitly states the point of this specific train is to test new routes and to analyze the infrastructure.
I think, like usual, it's a case of people reading the title and then going off to write a comment.
Yes, that's poor communication. You need to read the last half of the article to really understand what the news is about. The title should be "405,0 km/h auf Schnellfahrstrecke Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle in Testfahrt erreicht". Note that this omits mentioning a specific train.
The main cause (often somewhat hidden behind the term "decayed infrastructure") is that there are too many trains on too few tracks. There are many reasons for that. I think the main ones are:
* Political pressure to have more trains, without an adequate increase in infrastructure capacity (trains are cheaper than tracks and can be delivered faster). For example, political pressure utterly destroyed the reliability of the local rail system in our area, because the number of trains per hour was increased by a factor of 2-3, with only a minimal amount of new tracks (the majority of the network is still single-track). Apparently, the system worked in simulations under near-perfect conditions (no delays, few passengers, no technical problems). So let's build it! The chaos that ensued during the first few months after the network opened again made national headlines. Another example: the highly overloaded Rhine valley line between Mannheim and Basel was proposed to be upgraded to 4 tracks in 1964. In 1970, the project was scheduled to be finished in 1985. Currently the (ambitious) goal is to finish the project in 2041 [0]. The original line (270 km) was finished after 17 years in the 1840ies.
* On regional and local lines, a tendency to increase train frequency and to decrease train capacity (more trains, but shorter ones). I suspect this is also because of political pressure ("your station now has 4 trains per hour!!"), but it doesn't make any sense. A short train which can hold 150 passengers occupies exactly the same amount of "space" (blocks) on the tracks as a full-length train with a capacity of 1,200 passengers, and they require exactly the same amount of personnel.
* Privatization of DB on the early 90ies, with political pressure to be profitable. Tracks are expensive to maintain, so those parts of the infrastructure that could be classified as "redundant" were dismantled. Now they have a network with little redundancy, which is great from a short-sighted business standpoint, but terrible for reliability.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel_high-s...
Do you have a citation for this?
The people I know from the DB bubble are telling me that while some places have not enough track (e.g. the infamous Frankfurt-Mannheim/Riedbahn), but the everywhere problem is that there's just fault over fault over fault in tracks (often switches, but even tracks themselves) and trackside equipment.
> […] the number of trains per hour was increased by a factor of 2-3 […]
Even this I'm not quite willing to accept without citation; the railway timetables in the 70ies and 80ies, especially after the oil shock, were quite dense.
I don't, this is just my personal experience with passenger rail in southwestern Germany. The smaller lines with 1-2 trains per hour are usually extremely reliable, while the lines on crowded tracks are usually delayed, or cancelled completely. Note that many of the reliable lines I regularly used over the past 10-15 years ran on track equipment from the 19th century, some still with wing signals and switches operated via pulleys. (Anecdotally, I never experienced any technical problems with this old equipment as a passenger, the technical problems usually started after modernization).
> Even this I'm not quite willing to accept without citation; the railway timetables in the 70ies and 80ies, especially after the oil shock, were quite dense.
The factor of 2-3 was for my local network (which was converted to an S-Bahn network a few years ago, and a 30 minute frequency was introduced, with 15 minute frequency during peak hours). Some parts of that network only had 1-2 trains per day from the 70ies to the mid-90ies.
Btw. Wooden sleepers laid in the 19th century have completely rotted away by now; it's impossible for the line track itself to be that old (except very slow speed shunting tracks, maybe.)
DB is doing their best work for having people reaching out for cars.
While you might get stuck in traffic on the motorway, there are usually workarounds as soon as you get the next exit point, while being stuck on an train stopped in the middle of nowehere with a full train excedding passanger capacity because "pick random excuse", and reservations being optional, isn't really motivating to keep traveling by train.
If an ICE is, say, 15 minutes late, they cannot just drive faster to catch up. The schedule went on, and at that point there may be a much slower regional or intercity train on the same trajectory.
This is why ICE delays tend to cascade. It starts with a short delay, the ICE gets stuck behind a slower train, increasing the delay, etc.
The solution is better maintenance of tracks and trains, adding more rail capacity, adding redundancy, etc.
Of course, these are all much more expensive than an ICE speed experiment for PR.
Right here. Those slower (older) trains don't magically get any faster just because the train behind it sped up.
> pack the schedule
You actually can't just double it up because faster trains need bigger gaps between them, just like driving on a motorway. If the train in front needs to slow/stop for whatever reason, you don't want the train behind smashing into it at 400km/h because it was tailgating.
Switzerland SBB/CFF and the German DB can not be compared, not even from far.
The Swiss trains are amongst the best in the world in term on punctuality. Delays barely exceed few minutes most of the time. Every connection is scheduled to be done < 5min. The usage is smooth like butter and It works like a Swiss clock.
At the opposite, German trains in the eastern part are barely on time and give you an almost Soviet experience for the regional one: The trains are old, poorly maintained, like the track itself and the service suffers of it.
The only place in Western Europe I experienced train to be worst than in Germany is currently in Hungary where there were actual soviet trains.
Even the freaking French SNCF with their legendary strikes tend to be more punctual than the DB.
Switzerland doesn't have high-speed trains, only low-speed ones. And all timetables are carefully tuned to half- or full-hour station distance intervals that all trains on a track take at the same speed ("Taktfahrplan").
Germany has the worst of all those worlds: No Taktfahrplan (because it probably would be impossible due to the larger and far more complex network), high- and low-speed trains on the same tracks, and only some sections of dedicated high-speed rail that drive up the cost but still have shared stations and sections with low-speed rail so that punctuality goes down when the tiniest thing goes wrong.
Yes 100% right. Japan has the same where the Shinkansen uses dedicated track. If I do not say a mistake, China does the same too.
The fact it never has been done in a modern country like Germany with a dense high speed train traffic like the ICE is clearly a sign of planning deficit from the authorities.
The Shinkansen initial network and separated tracks have been built at an age where JRails was still a single centralized company.
The main reason was to create a network with a focus speed and punctuality. And to be fair, it was the right choice and pretty revolutionary at the time.
As someone from the region, since when is Hungary 'Western' Europe? We are happy when acknowledged as 'Central' but this is new to me.
On some Swiss lines it's fairly common to have trains recover their delay at departure (which also avoids cascading impact).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling
The most efficient use of the tracks would be to limit all trains to the speed of the slowest train that travels a route. Then you can have minimal distances between trains.
Also, faster trains are less fuel-efficient, quadratically with speed. So a slowdown would help the environment and the throughput. The only thing it wouldn't improve is passenger happiness ;)
China’s next-gen is being deployed with goals of a 400kph service speed.
It seems the network of roads built in the 40s, 50s and 60s just can no longer be done efficiently.
Of course they can, we have not lost that capability. It's not a matter of efficiency but effectivity. Road constructions of the 1960s are not effective for 21st century traffic demands. Today's level of traffic far exceeds the anticipated level of traffic at the time of construction. Germany sees this all the time, esp. with regards to bridges. Maintaining a road or a bridge to be effective at supporting the original traffic levels is easy but under today's load would require constant maintenance to not deteriorate immediately. Those constructions need to be upgraded which is hard to impossible to do in situ.
Let's take a well-known construction in Germany, the Leverkusener Brücke an der A1. It was originally built in the 1960s for a traffic level of 40,000 cars (and trucks) per day. It was upgraded and refurbished over the decades (meaning almost constant construction work happening) to a level of 100,000 cars per day. It wasn't enough, in 2016 about 120,000 cars crossed the bridge per day. At the same time trucks got about 30 % heavier from 1960 to 1990 and we all know that passenger cars got heavier, too.
So the whole bridge was replaced, which took 7 years, ending in 2024. During that time traffic was rerouted over two nearby bridges in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The Cologne bridge was so badly damaged by the additional load that it had to be partially closed down and now is up for refurbishment or, maybe, replacement. Network effects at work ;)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: we are actually better at building stuff than our predecessors but the demands put on our constructions are much, much higher. I don't dare to say if our capabilities have grown as much as the demands require.
Citation needed.
As I see it, the US is still riding on the coattails of 1960-s road construction. We should be doing more of it, in fact, not sabotaging it with bike lanes and road diets.
Counterintuitively perhaps, bike lanes, road diets and public transport actually work better. Give people other ways to move around, and you take pressure off the road system, making traffic better for everyone. And that includes the drivers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
It is just that trains and bikes are much more efficient in terms of land use.
The 3 lane road in front of my house is "good" for 16,000 cars a day. The 2 lane train line a 5 minutes walk from my house is "good" for 120,000 passengers a day. A train line can carry about 10x the traffic of a car lane (in practice) with similar ground usage.
So when a train system has more demand/use than expected (e.g. leman express in the geneva region) there are more options to increase throughput (in the leman express case double level trains) that require less new infrastructure to be build.
When new infrastructure is required, limitations of space mean that a 15 year period from plan to implementation is normal. Which means infrastructure which has more head-room is preferred over quickly saturated ones.
To add the adding of one lane to the A1 for 18KM costs half the total of the leman express infrastructure. But has significantly less benefits in total transit capacity.
If done right, human-centric infrastructure can create much better urban environments than car-centric ones.
Not uniformly. New York's LIRR (90 to 95% [1]) and Metro-North (99% [2]) feature on-time rates that rival the Swiss (93% [3]).
[1] https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf
[2] https://wpdh.com/metro-north-on-time-reliability/
[3] https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?=&years=1,4,5,6,7&scrol...
> A commuter train is considered on-time by the LIRR if it arrives within 5 minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled arrival time.
The second source doesn't say, but let's assume it's the same as for LIRR, i.e. 6 minutes.
It's also unfortunate that the SBB doesn't immediately tell us the metric, but I happen to know it's 3 minutes (more specifically 2 minutes and 59 seconds).
In other words, the LIRR permits a delay of twice the time as SBB for it to constitute late. The S-trains in Copenhagen now has a punctuality of 97% using a 3 minute metric.[0]
[0] https://www.dsb.dk/om-dsb/virksomheden/rettidighed/s-togs-re...
Not sure how you compare a small simple system like Lord which is pretty much one line with a few branches with an integrated multi-national system like the entire Swiss railway either
As for the LIRR, it seems it's only the terminal station that counts:
> Thus, a train is considered late only if it arrives at its final destination six minutes or more after its scheduled arrival time.
And yes, in Germany this happens and is reflected in rising "cancelled train" statistics. KPIs for Deutsche Bahn managers haven't caught up yet ;)
"The Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle route was used for the record-breaking journey without any modifications. According to Nagl, this shows that infrastructure investments create a solid foundation that lasts for generations. The insights gained will help with future renovations and the development of new high-speed trains.
The ICE test train used was a Velaro Novo test car from Siemens Mobility. Thomas Graetz, Vice President High Speed and Intercity Trains at Siemens, explained that the test runs provided important insights into acoustics, aerodynamics, and handling. The Velaro Novo is set to establish new standards for capacity, economy, and efficiency.
Dr. Hiie-Mai Unger from DB Systemtechnik led the measurements with the special ICE-S test train. This train is equipped with extensive measurement technology and collected data on the interaction between train and track."
https://www.golem.de/news/deutsche-bahn-ice-testzug-erreicht...
Translation via DeepL
The test train used is a set from the late 20th century. So old that its regular brethren are already scheduled for retirement. This is the last generation of ICE that was still using separate locomotives (and with that, limited traction) instead of powered wheelsets distributed all over the full length of the train. The only thing Velaro Novo in this demonstration is that they inserted an unpowered prototype car into the trainset.
The theoretical assumed Vmax of this old train should be 440 km/h. The fasted actual speed was 406,9 km/h back in 1988. The test itself was focused on the Velaro Novo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Velaro#/media/File:Wag... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Velaro
Design targets from German Wiki:
I like the concept of the Valero (ICE3) the design with the engines below the floor of passenger cabins is elegant.The press text is unfocused and seems "Marketing". The DB probably cares more about the fact, that the ten year old track is maintained in good condition. The biggest problem of DB is bad maintenance of tracks and trains. Caused due to the attempt to make it a profitable stock company and weird split-up of tasks between sub-corps and the state as fallback. It should have been remained a one public state railroad not focused on earnings. Sins of deregulation and privatization of the 90ies.
PS: Interestingly Deutsche Lufthansa is known for the well in-house maintenance branch. That's why they're happy with the B747-8. Not so big as the A380-800. The maintenance of four engines doesn't require them much effort. Here everything is in one major corporation and the need for good maintenance quality is intrinsic.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity_Express
It was a bit odd how the ticket prices seem to fluctuate a lot over there based on timing (like 20 EUR if you buy half a week ahead of time, closer to 40 EUR nearer to travel date, at least in my case) but I much preferred taking the train over flying.
I worked in Germany in 2005 and back then everything was fixed price per kilometer for each train class, and you could get rail passes of sorts and get on whatever the hell trains you want during their validity. I'd take train roundtrips after work just to watch sunsets.
Surge pricing is not an uniquely american concept.
Depending on the train you get, either you get a really nice travel, or some experience that doesn't reflect the plane like price ticket, and might leave you with some bad taste regarding train traveling.
Having canceled trains, crowded ICEs, either due to missing reservations as they are optional and anyone can get into one provided valid ticket, or because passagers from a canceled ICE needed to jump into an already crowded one, missign connections by 5m, being stuck in the middle of nowhere, only some WC work across the whole train, they decided to not have a wagon bar on a hot summer day,.....
The fun of train traveling, all great when stars align.
I wonder if the Germans will end up having to rename the train system at some point.
You are vastly overestimating the relevance of this issue for the German public discourse.
A high speed pr stunt isn’t much interest sure.
On a €/(avg. ICE speed) basis likely makes more sense to invest directly in RB.
"the overall performance improvement gained by optimizing a single part of a system is limited by the fraction of time that the improved part is actually used"
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
And probably the tear is bigger on curvy lines which most lines in Germany are, compared to e.g. China.