May 13, 2025 • 24 mins
Louis announces his move to Germany for two years, as the Transit Tangents Pod plans to continue with a mix of European and American content.
• Germany's Deutschland ticket offers access to the entire country's public transit for a monthly fee
• German transit operates on multiple tiers: ICE (high-speed), IC (intercity), RE/RB (regional), plus local networks
• High-speed ICE trains connect major cities at 250 km/h but face punctuality issues at 66% on-time performance
• German cities feature integrated U-Bahn (subway), S-Bahn (commuter rail), and Straßenbahn (tram) systems
• Small 120,000-person city of Jena has 5 tram lines and 13 bus routes serving nearly as many daily passengers as all of Austin
• Texas is geographically twice the size of Germany yet lacks comprehensive transit connections between cities
• Frankfurt metro (2.7M people) has extensive transit comparable to similarly sized US cities like Austin, Charlotte, Denver
The hosts are planning a special Northeast Corridor Acela tour from Boston to Baltimore in June – stay tuned and support via Patreon if you want to help make trips like this happen.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This week on Transit Tangents, we discuss the country
that has put basically all ofits public transit network
accessible by one ticket, plussome upcoming changes to the
show and some exciting news forLewis.
All of this and more coming upon Transit Tangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis episode of Transit Tangents
.
Ish haza Lewis, ish haza Chris,and today we're going to be
(00:43):
taking Transit TangentsInternational, and there's a
reason for that, which we'll getto in a second here, but we're
going to be giving an overviewof transit in the country of
Germany.
There are a few interestingthings with Germany that we'll
get into.
One thing that caught my eyeinitially was the Deutschland
ticket, which is a pass thatessentially works for public
(01:06):
transit in every city across thewhole country, including
regional trains, which is prettywild on one ticket yeah, like a
monthly fee for it.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's amazing, because it's so hard, even in the US,
to get one ticket for just onecity.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Right, this is just everywhere, the whole country
Impressive.
We're also going to kind oftalk about the overview of their
high speed trains, the regionaltrains, the infamous delays
that they have, as well as kindof an overview of local networks
too, so it's kind of all a lotin one.
And there is a pretty specificreason why we're doing this,
though, and it's because Iactually have some news that for
(01:42):
at least the next two years, Iwill be living in Germany with
my partner, jerry, who was justoffered a research position
there.
Your husband, jerry.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My husband.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Jerry, yes, kind of crazy.
It's new, yes, very new.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It is very exciting.
People on Patreon, oursubscribers.
They already got this news, soif you want to get the news
ahead of time, be sure tosubscribe to that Patreon.
But don't worry, transitTangents will continue.
Yes, yeah, for now, what we'retrying to do is figure out
exactly what that formula isgoing to look like, but we do
think it's going to continue tobe weekly episodes where we meet
(02:19):
on the virtual.
Couch Lewis can go do someEuropean content, I'll continue
to do US content, and couchLewis can go do some European
content, I'll continue to do UScontent, and then we'll come
back together and then there'llbe plenty of opportunities for
Lewis to come back to the Statesand for me to get over to
Germany as well.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Totally.
We'll kind of talk a little bitmore about that sort of stuff
at the end of the episode, butwithout further ado let's kind
of jump into this.
And Germany has a prettyinteresting history in general,
obviously.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Really yes, tell me more.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
But to stick to the transit side of it, obviously
Germany was two countries upuntil 1990.
After World War II you had EastGermany and West Germany and
with that you had two transitnetworks.
There was some inter-countrytravel by train in between, but
(03:06):
oftentimes it was was prettyclunky process.
The border took a long time toget back and forth across.
Oftentimes you're switchingtrains.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
And it also wasn't like these two services or two
countries fully developed thetransit networks independently.
There was existing trainservice between both sides of
the country before it was splitin half.
So you had really weirdinstances where the borderline
would cut through the countryand the train line just either
stopped or there was just abarrier and the trains didn't
proceed Right, and I mean not tomention too a lot of this stuff
(03:34):
was destroyed during World WarII, depending on where you were
at.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So I mean, when these two networks kind of reopened
it was not pretty for a whileand you know, eventually they
did build them up quite a bit,but you essentially had one
country, one country.
You essentially had one companyin the East which was served by
the Deutsche Reichsbahn, andthen in West Germany you had
(03:58):
Deutsche Bundesbahn.
They operated independently andthen in 1994, this was a few
years after unification you havethe creation of what we have
today, which is Deutsche Bahn,which is the rail operator that
is technically a private companybut is fully owned by the
(04:18):
German government and operatestrains across the country.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
And we were talking about this a little bit before
the episode.
Like you said, private companyowned by the government Sounds
familiar.
In the US, amtrak istechnically a private company
but is funded and operated andmanaged by the government.
Big differences between the USand Germany, and this happens in
a lot of countries.
Germany owns all of the railinfrastructure Right.
The US does not.
(04:42):
So the US government may havesome say over rail occasionally,
but for the most part all ofour rail is privatized.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right, yeah, and it's mostly owned in the US by
freight operators for the mostpart, with the exception of a
few instances.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I think there's good and there's bad to that system
of the government not onlyowning the train lines, but what
I will say is the German systemof the state owning all of the
train lines.
It allows them to do so muchmore and we are about to get
into all that they do.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, Honestly, I've never really made this
comparison before, but it iswild that in the United States
roads are owned by thegovernment, but why are
railroads not?
I mean, it makes sense to havethe infrastructure to move
around the country be run by thegovernment, but why are
railroads not?
I mean, it's a very it makessense to have the infrastructure
to move around the country berun by the government.
But whatever it may be, Are youa socialist?
Before we kind of move on tomore of a modern day, look at
(05:37):
what the systems look like today.
I do think it's worth pointingout a really unique thing.
Maybe this deserves its ownepisode at one point.
But in kind of doing research,putting this episode together,
looking at maps of Berlin'stransit network while Berlin was
split in half between east andwest, is pretty wild.
You had an existing metrosystem in that city that then
(05:59):
just had to be sliced in halfand, like you were saying before
, with the kind of regional railyou also had lines in the city
that kind of did crisscross overand some of those lines just
shut down.
Other lines they would board upand close just some stations
that would be accessing justEast Germany or just West
Germany.
For those of you watching,we'll have the map up here.
You can check it out.
Otherwise, for those listening,it's worth a Google to go see
(06:22):
what that looked like.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So fast forwarding to today, the primary rail
provider in Germany is DeutscheBahn, and there are a couple of
competitors as well.
There's FlixTrain and maybe acouple other smaller companies.
But Deutsche Bahn is really thelargest provider in the country
and, as we mentioned, this is aprivate company provider in the
(06:46):
country and, as we mentioned,this is a private company.
There was a period where theGerman government thought about
sort of releasing this companyas an IPO, but then the 2008
financial crisis happened andGermany sort of pulled those
plans back Right and kind of.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
since then there hasn't really been another push
for it, fortunately, because Ithink it's probably not the
right model moving forward.
But it's interesting that thatis a piece of the history, that
that happened here.
So yeah, you know, like Chrissaid, deutsche Bahn, the main
operator, you, you will havethese other companies and even
other countries are allowed tooperate trains into Germany
(07:18):
especially, you know you'll haveFrench trains entering Germany
from France, or Swiss trains orwhatever it may be, especially
along the kind of border areas.
But from here we'll kind ofbreak down how the system in
general is laid out, from thehighest level of you know kind
of long distance high speedtrain, high speed trains down to
(07:38):
kind of more local service inthe different cities.
And it's just fun, as we kindof go through this, to think
about like what this could looklike here at home in the United
States, because you know, likeGermany is also, it's still a
very car centric Country.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Oh, absolutely, I mean, think about it's such a
car culture, I mean first of all, bond the other bond right like
my husband Brent, who lovescars.
Yeah, I had a terrifyingexperience where we we rented a
car in Germany.
I look at the speedometer andwe're going're going 160 miles
an hour on the highway.
Yeah, I should find a video ofthat.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But you know it's such a car-centric culture you
do still have, you know, all ofthese highways.
It's a very highway-centriccountry.
The US, you know, we based ourhighway system off of the
Autobahn, famously but also allthe car manufacturers.
I mean some of the highest andmost well-known car
manufacturers in the world comeout of Germany.
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And it's just nice to see, though, that while there
is this car culture there, thatthere's also an emphasis on
having other ways to get around.
Yeah, you can do both Exactly.
So, kind of starting off at thehighest level, the German
high-speed rails are the ICE,the Intercity Express.
These were first introduced inthe 90s.
(08:52):
They make up the kind oflong-distance network, and
they're generally the high-speedtrains that get from bigger
cities to bigger cities, limitedstops in between each of them,
kind of being the way to getaround the fastest when they're
on time.
We'll save the delays for asecond here.
I had a chance to ride some ofthese back in October when I was
out there to go visit.
(09:13):
Before committing to the move,make sure we weren't making some
grave mistake, and I took anICE train from.
I took two.
Actually, I took one fromStuttgart to Frankfurt.
Actually, I took one from, uh,stuttgart to frankfurt and then,
uh, later in the trip, I tookone from frankfurt to erfurt.
Um, and, yeah, I mean they'reespecially as a, as an american,
(09:34):
I mean they feel pretty amazing.
Uh, you're going, you know, 250kilometers an hour for parts of
it.
Um, you know some of it.
You're going slower as well,but like you know, on the
sections, once you're out of thedowntowns and whatnot, uh, they
can get going pretty quick.
In addition to that, the nextkind of tier down is the IC
routes.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, and these IC routes which are the inner city
routes, they're very similar tothe ICE.
They're still higher speedtrains on better tracks.
They go these similar longdistances but they do make more
stops in between.
So I think of, like the ices issort of these long distance
express routes.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
The ic is going to make more of these um stops at
the, maybe the smaller citiesalong the way too, yeah, and not
even smaller cities like themedium-sized cities along the
way, yeah, and in addition, Imean, like some of them even are
running on, it varies, right,like some of them are running
even on tracks that are mostlynot even high speed too.
So, the ic ones, there's just alot more variability.
Basically, I actually got totake one of these as well, uh,
(10:31):
the smaller city of jena, whichis where jerry and I will be
moving to.
We took one from there all theway to stuttgart, which is a
it's like a long journey, um,but we took it on the, the ic
train and, uh, we actuallyarrived within a couple minutes
of our scheduled arrival time.
So, um, which was nice, becausethe kind of one piece of this
that we haven't talked about yet.
So the, these are kind of likewhat people are using to travel
(10:54):
from city to city.
The ic and the ic, um, delayshave been an issue.
Uh, if you've, you know, lookedinto transit in germany at all,
or you concern can consumetransit content online, you've
probably seen Deutsche Bahndelay content somewhere.
The trains right now onlyarrive on time 66% of the time.
(11:17):
Now, I will say, on time is apretty tight definition in
Germany, the trains that count,and the third of trains that are
delayed is only a delay,starting at six minutes.
So, from being honest, likeit's a very, it's a very
punctual society, yeah, yeah,yeah, and that's not to say that
like they don't have a lot ofdelays that are longer than six
(11:37):
minutes, but a six minute delayto me, like that's basically on
time in austin, that's on timefor in general, everything 15
minutes late's on time in austin, yeah 15 minutes is almost
early in austin for noteven just for transit.
I'm not talking about, I'mtalking about just like doing
anything like.
This is the latest city I'veever been.
I'm gonna have to really adjustmy life moving to germany where
, like you, need to be early tobe on time, basically.
(11:58):
But that's a that's a wholeother thing.
But the reason the these longerdistance trains are actually
running into the delays in a lotof cases is, in a lot of cases,
due to the fact that rail hasbecome a more popular option for
people in recent years.
So as a response, deutsche bonnhas been adding more routes,
(12:18):
more trains to the system, butthe investment in the
infrastructure at the same timeon the tracks, the stations, the
switching, all this sort ofstuff hasn't come in at the same
time.
The German government has beenlagging in the infrastructure
investment.
So as a result, you end up withtrains that get stuck waiting
just outside of the station orin between waiting for a switch.
(12:41):
The German government is nowtrying to play catch up on some
of that.
So there's now a lot ofconstruction that is closing
tracks, which then adds to thedelays, and these things kind of
spiral down.
Now you know if they wanted torun and have a higher on time
performance.
They could do it, but theywould just run less trains.
But at this point they don'twant to do that because you want
(13:03):
to have the trains for peopleto take.
And you end up with a lot oflike happy accidents where you
show up and it's like, oh damn,my train is delayed by 40
minutes, and then you get offyour other train and you're
going to do the transfer andyou're like, oh wait, the train
that was supposed to bescheduled before it was also
delayed for 40 minutes and nowyou're just getting on that
other train.
So, uh and and oftentimes thesetickets are very flexible,
(13:25):
where if you have a ticket fromone destination to another and
you have a delay or somethingand another train is going the
same one like you can just kindof hop on that other train.
So you get a lot of weird stuffgoing on there, but it can work
out.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
So we're talking about three levels, three main
levels of train service.
You have the ICE.
We already covered that.
We have the ICE, which we justcovered.
The next one down is theregional rail.
Yes, um, regional rail.
It's going to be a series ofsmaller operators, so they may
not be under the um deutschebonn logo or branding but they
do sort of roll up into thedeutsche umbrella.
(13:58):
These are going to be servicesthat serve maybe city pairs or
like regional, uh, you knowcollections of cities and they
may not, you know, go to, youknow, from the of cities and
they may not, you know, go to,you know, from the smaller city
all the way to Berlin orsomething.
It's going to connect thesesmaller communities, but
generally they will feed back into the higher tiers of service
(14:18):
so that if you are in one ofthese smaller cities you can
still get to the major cities.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Totally, and even within the kind of regional
trains, they kind of fall intotwo categories as well, in a
very similar fashion to the ICEand the ICE trains.
So you have the RB and the RE.
The RB is just regional bondand the RE is regional express.
They do kind of exactly whatyou'd think.
So the regional express is kindof hitting the more populated
(14:44):
areas along the route that aregoing to have more riders and
everything, and then the, theregional bond, will stop at
every station, essentially alongthe way, for the most part
including, I mean, when we werethere in October some of these
stations are serving reallysmall rural communities, and so
it's nice that they have thatoption to be able to connect
(15:06):
into the rail network.
Even in some of these towns thatin the United States, I mean,
they don't even have a busconnection.
You know what I mean.
There's no way to get there, orin a lot of places in the world
.
So it's important to see this,this sort of service, and again,
just to give a personal example, I was able to use both
regional, regional bond andregional express trains um again
(15:28):
in that same sort of areabetween erfurt and jena, um to
be able to go back and forth andthey have both options.
Basically every half an houryou've got a train going back
and forth um and some of themare kind of alternating between
the rb and the re, leaving somereally small towns in between um
to be able to be connected, youknow, with some sort of access,
(15:48):
but not making it so that everysingle train needs to stop
there necessarily and itconnects to.
You know, erfurt, which Imentioned, which is on one of
the newer high speed lines thatkind of connects across the
country.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So those are our three higher level or higher
tiers of train service thatconnect people all across
Germany.
Then we have our secret fourthlevel, maybe not so secret, but
all of these cities then alsooperate their own local networks
, and so if you're in a Germancity, you're going to see the
U-Bahn.
Those are things like thesubway, really dense urban rail.
(16:23):
You have the S-Bahn, which isgoing to be more like commuter
service, think like some of theAmtrak services on the Northeast
or something, or like Metra inChicago.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And then you have the Strassenbahn, which is more
like a trolley or tram systemthat you would see in the city.
Did I say that correctly?
It was close.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Close enough.
Yeah, honestly, I'm probablysaying it wrong, so it's all
right, I'll get there at somepoint.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Then you also have more unique versions of German
transit, which is sort of likethe Schwebenbahn which I'm
probably going to mispronouncewhich is in Wuppertal, Germany,
just outside of Cologne, and Idid get a chance to travel there
last year and fell in love withthis transit.
It is a suspended rail, sothink it kind of looks like a
(17:13):
subway car, but it is suspendedfrom the top and it follows this
beautiful river valley throughthis really sort of narrow
winding city.
It is the coolest transit I'veever experienced.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, and it's basically like hanging.
It's kind of cool.
It's like an upside downmonorail, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, yeah it's, it's amazing.
Um, honestly, forget gondolas.
Those are old news.
Uh, this schwab and bond fromthe 1800s.
That's the way to go totallyyeah, and it's uh.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
What's really impressive about these like
local networks in especially alot of the bigger cities, is the
bigger cities will feature anew bond and s bond, and in a
lot of cases, they'll have astrassenbahn network of trams
across the city too, and, whenyou like, lay all those out on a
map across the city, I mean and, and then add on buses too.
Right, everything is covered.
(18:02):
Yep, and then you sprinkle ontop of that as well, like the,
the regional trains that havestops to you know, that are like
it's, it's really impressive.
The systems integrate togethervery well.
Um, and it's just, it's exactlywhat you, it's exactly what you
would hope for.
You know what I mean.
It's like, oh, if you're goingto actually plan for this, this
(18:22):
is what you would do on thatnote, one of the comparisons
that I wanted to make was Texascompared to Germany.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Texas is almost twice the size of Germany, which is
wild to think aboutGeographically.
Geographically, yeah, but ifyou place the land area of
Germany over Texas, it wouldbasically take up all of like
central to east Texas, and thatis the most populated part of
our state.
Now, keep in mind, texas has 31million people in it versus
Germany, which has about 83million people and definitely
(18:52):
more density of cities.
But I'm sitting here thinkingGermany has their entire country
covered in this transit network.
We could do half of that inTexas and be completely covered.
We could do a third of that, aquarter.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And basically cover Pardon my French, yeah, 10%.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And basically cover all of the populated areas in
the state of Texas, and we justcan't do it, and it's just
amazing that one country that ishalf the size of our one state
is able to do it.
Some other comparisons that wewant to throw out there the
Frankfurt metro area has apopulation of about 2.7 million
people and they have every layerof this transit network
(19:31):
existing in their city.
So it is well covered.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
The map is.
If you're watching, the map isup here Again, not to tell you
to do this twice if you'relistening, but like literally,
look up a map of the Frankfurtmetro because it's impressive.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, the transit network is extensive and when we
compare that to US metros 2.7million people we're talking US
metro regions.
We have cities like Austin, stLouis, kansas City, san Antonio
All of these cities are similarsize when you look at their
metros Charlotte, orlando,denver there's so many in here
Baltimore, all of these aresimilar in size to Frankfurt.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And then compare the maps, it's really sad it is
really sad and it's not to saythat those places don't have
transit, because they do, and ifyou're interested in seeing
them, I mean some of the citieson that list San Antonio, uh,
austin and Kansas City we havedone episodes on in the past, so
definitely encourage you to gocheck them out.
But, yeah, it's, it's it justlike I don't know, we don't have
(20:27):
an excuse.
You know we've in other recentepisodes I don't know if this
one will have come out yet ornot but an episode that we just
did on some North Carolina stuff.
I mean like it was potentiallytaking five years, ten years, to
just break ground on a BRTproject, not even to finish it.
To break ground Like it'syeah's, yeah, yeah, I don't know
(20:49):
.
I'm definitely very excited.
Uh, again, kind of we mentionedat the beginning of this the
point of us doing this episodespecifically about Germany.
It is where I'll be moving injust a couple months.
So, um, you know that's kind ofthe purpose of doing this
overview.
I'm really excited to be ableto go to a lot of these places,
explore on the ground and kindof, uh, you know our plans that
we're going to do all sorts ofdifferent stuff with the show
(21:10):
moving forward.
But, um, you know, while I'mthere, I hope to be able to go
out and go and record somereally cool transit things going
on there, maybe get someinterviews with folks and then
we'll be able to go to thevirtual couch, essentially, and
talk about them.
So, uh, if you have specificplaces in Germany that you
definitely want to see, orprojects and whatnot there, or
(21:30):
even in Europe broadly, I'mgoing to try to take advantage
of the situation, of the factthat I'm going to be living
there, to travel as much as Ican, because once you're there
it's a lot more affordable toget around than buying those
very, very expensive flightsback and forth.
So, yeah, definitely let usknow.
I'm really excited to dive intoit and even really small cities
like the one that I'm moving to.
So Yena only has a population ofabout 120,000 people.
(21:53):
They have five tram lines.
Now, not all of them are liketheir own dedicated line the
whole time.
I mean, it does kind of runalong some trunk lines as well.
But five tram lines, they have13 bus routes.
In addition to that, along someof the main trunks on the bus
routes, I mean you've gotfrequencies of every five
(22:14):
minutes basically all day Inwhole in that city, again of
120,000 people, the networkserves upwards of 62,000
passengers daily.
Compare that to where we livehere in Austin Cap Metro carries
roughly 70,000 passengers a day, which sounds like it's not
that much different right Nottoo bad, until you realize that
(22:38):
Austin is at least 20 timeslarger in population than Yenna
is.
Yes, so it's just obviously it'svery different, right?
Y know it's a very like densesmall city.
It's very walkable.
35% of daily trips there aretaken on foot, 15% by bike, the
rest are either in a car or onpublic transit.
(22:59):
So, you don't even need ane-bike over there.
I know I'm probably still goingto get one, but you probably
could.
It's a little hilly, so youknow, I feel like I still need
to hold on to my.
I'm still a member of the cultof the e-bike.
We haven't talked about that ina long time.
Yes, but yeah, it's prettyinteresting just to see the
comparisons.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I am excited, though, you're going to Germany, but
before you go, we're alsoplanning an episode right now,
potentially in June, where we'regoing to be able to make some
comparisons to our more denselypopulated parts of the country.
We are working on an episodethat will be an Acela tour from
Boston to Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, and it will be a whole series really, because
we're going to have we'll talkabout the Acela and the kind of
Northeast regional trains we'rehoping to do Boston, Philly and
Baltimore, maybe some additionalthings mixed in there.
So definitely stay tuned forthat.
And if you want to help supportthat trip too, the best way to
be able to do so is via ourPatreon.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Also hit us up.
If you are in Boston,philadelphia or Baltimore, let
us know.
Maybe you can meet us along thealong the way.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Totally.
We definitely want to hear fromyou, but with all of that I
mean yes, a lot of excitingstuff coming up.
Stay tuned for some slightdifferences in how the show is,
but don't worry, we're not goinganywhere.
We're very excited.
I'm excited that a lot of thisis coming up very quickly.
I just got our visas approvedthis week.
(24:18):
From when we're recording this,I don't know exactly when this
will come out, but at thebeginning of May we got our
visas approved.
Very exciting stuff.
With all that being said, ifyou have not liked this video
already, please consider doingso.
It helps us out quite a bit.
Also, leave a comment.
What are you looking forward towith some of the changes on the
show?
Is there anything in Germany orin Europe that you'd like us to
go and talk about and cover?
And again, you can support theshow directly via Patreon by
(24:41):
subscribing or even justchecking out our merch store,
which is available right below.
So, with all that being said,thank you all so much for
watching and enjoy the rest ofyour Transit.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Tangents Tuesday.
This week on Transit Tangents, we discuss the country
that has put basically all ofits public transit network
accessible by one ticket, plussome upcoming changes to the
show and some exciting news forLewis.
All of this and more coming upon Transit Tangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis episode of Transit Tangents
.
Ish haza Lewis, ish haza Chris,and today we're going to be
(00:43):
taking Transit TangentsInternational, and there's a
reason for that, which we'll getto in a second here, but we're
going to be giving an overviewof transit in the country of
Germany.
There are a few interestingthings with Germany that we'll
get into.
One thing that caught my eyeinitially was the Deutschland
ticket, which is a pass thatessentially works for public
(01:06):
transit in every city across thewhole country, including
regional trains, which is prettywild on one ticket yeah, like a
monthly fee for it.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's amazing, because it's so hard, even in the US,
to get one ticket for just onecity.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Right, this is just everywhere, the whole country
Impressive.
We're also going to kind oftalk about the overview of their
high speed trains, the regionaltrains, the infamous delays
that they have, as well as kindof an overview of local networks
too, so it's kind of all a lotin one.
And there is a pretty specificreason why we're doing this,
though, and it's because Iactually have some news that for
(01:42):
at least the next two years, Iwill be living in Germany with
my partner, jerry, who was justoffered a research position
there.
Your husband, jerry.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My husband.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Jerry, yes, kind of crazy.
It's new, yes, very new.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It is very exciting.
People on Patreon, oursubscribers.
They already got this news, soif you want to get the news
ahead of time, be sure tosubscribe to that Patreon.
But don't worry, transitTangents will continue.
Yes, yeah, for now, what we'retrying to do is figure out
exactly what that formula isgoing to look like, but we do
think it's going to continue tobe weekly episodes where we meet
(02:19):
on the virtual.
Couch Lewis can go do someEuropean content, I'll continue
to do US content, and couchLewis can go do some European
content, I'll continue to do UScontent, and then we'll come
back together and then there'llbe plenty of opportunities for
Lewis to come back to the Statesand for me to get over to
Germany as well.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Totally.
We'll kind of talk a little bitmore about that sort of stuff
at the end of the episode, butwithout further ado let's kind
of jump into this.
And Germany has a prettyinteresting history in general,
obviously.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Really yes, tell me more.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
But to stick to the transit side of it, obviously
Germany was two countries upuntil 1990.
After World War II you had EastGermany and West Germany and
with that you had two transitnetworks.
There was some inter-countrytravel by train in between, but
(03:06):
oftentimes it was was prettyclunky process.
The border took a long time toget back and forth across.
Oftentimes you're switchingtrains.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
And it also wasn't like these two services or two
countries fully developed thetransit networks independently.
There was existing trainservice between both sides of
the country before it was splitin half.
So you had really weirdinstances where the borderline
would cut through the countryand the train line just either
stopped or there was just abarrier and the trains didn't
proceed Right, and I mean not tomention too a lot of this stuff
(03:34):
was destroyed during World WarII, depending on where you were
at.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So I mean, when these two networks kind of reopened
it was not pretty for a whileand you know, eventually they
did build them up quite a bit,but you essentially had one
country, one country.
You essentially had one companyin the East which was served by
the Deutsche Reichsbahn, andthen in West Germany you had
(03:58):
Deutsche Bundesbahn.
They operated independently andthen in 1994, this was a few
years after unification you havethe creation of what we have
today, which is Deutsche Bahn,which is the rail operator that
is technically a private companybut is fully owned by the
(04:18):
German government and operatestrains across the country.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
And we were talking about this a little bit before
the episode.
Like you said, private companyowned by the government Sounds
familiar.
In the US, amtrak istechnically a private company
but is funded and operated andmanaged by the government.
Big differences between the USand Germany, and this happens in
a lot of countries.
Germany owns all of the railinfrastructure Right.
The US does not.
(04:42):
So the US government may havesome say over rail occasionally,
but for the most part all ofour rail is privatized.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right, yeah, and it's mostly owned in the US by
freight operators for the mostpart, with the exception of a
few instances.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I think there's good and there's bad to that system
of the government not onlyowning the train lines, but what
I will say is the German systemof the state owning all of the
train lines.
It allows them to do so muchmore and we are about to get
into all that they do.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, Honestly, I've never really made this
comparison before, but it iswild that in the United States
roads are owned by thegovernment, but why are
railroads not?
I mean, it makes sense to havethe infrastructure to move
around the country be run by thegovernment, but why are
railroads not?
I mean, it's a very it makessense to have the infrastructure
to move around the country berun by the government.
But whatever it may be, Are youa socialist?
Before we kind of move on tomore of a modern day, look at
(05:37):
what the systems look like today.
I do think it's worth pointingout a really unique thing.
Maybe this deserves its ownepisode at one point.
But in kind of doing research,putting this episode together,
looking at maps of Berlin'stransit network while Berlin was
split in half between east andwest, is pretty wild.
You had an existing metrosystem in that city that then
(05:59):
just had to be sliced in halfand, like you were saying before
, with the kind of regional railyou also had lines in the city
that kind of did crisscross overand some of those lines just
shut down.
Other lines they would board upand close just some stations
that would be accessing justEast Germany or just West
Germany.
For those of you watching,we'll have the map up here.
You can check it out.
Otherwise, for those listening,it's worth a Google to go see
(06:22):
what that looked like.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So fast forwarding to today, the primary rail
provider in Germany is DeutscheBahn, and there are a couple of
competitors as well.
There's FlixTrain and maybe acouple other smaller companies.
But Deutsche Bahn is really thelargest provider in the country
and, as we mentioned, this is aprivate company provider in the
(06:46):
country and, as we mentioned,this is a private company.
There was a period where theGerman government thought about
sort of releasing this companyas an IPO, but then the 2008
financial crisis happened andGermany sort of pulled those
plans back Right and kind of.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
since then there hasn't really been another push
for it, fortunately, because Ithink it's probably not the
right model moving forward.
But it's interesting that thatis a piece of the history, that
that happened here.
So yeah, you know, like Chrissaid, deutsche Bahn, the main
operator, you, you will havethese other companies and even
other countries are allowed tooperate trains into Germany
(07:18):
especially, you know you'll haveFrench trains entering Germany
from France, or Swiss trains orwhatever it may be, especially
along the kind of border areas.
But from here we'll kind ofbreak down how the system in
general is laid out, from thehighest level of you know kind
of long distance high speedtrain, high speed trains down to
(07:38):
kind of more local service inthe different cities.
And it's just fun, as we kindof go through this, to think
about like what this could looklike here at home in the United
States, because you know, likeGermany is also, it's still a
very car centric Country.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Oh, absolutely, I mean, think about it's such a
car culture, I mean first of all, bond the other bond right like
my husband Brent, who lovescars.
Yeah, I had a terrifyingexperience where we we rented a
car in Germany.
I look at the speedometer andwe're going're going 160 miles
an hour on the highway.
Yeah, I should find a video ofthat.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But you know it's such a car-centric culture you
do still have, you know, all ofthese highways.
It's a very highway-centriccountry.
The US, you know, we based ourhighway system off of the
Autobahn, famously but also allthe car manufacturers.
I mean some of the highest andmost well-known car
manufacturers in the world comeout of Germany.
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And it's just nice to see, though, that while there
is this car culture there, thatthere's also an emphasis on
having other ways to get around.
Yeah, you can do both Exactly.
So, kind of starting off at thehighest level, the German
high-speed rails are the ICE,the Intercity Express.
These were first introduced inthe 90s.
(08:52):
They make up the kind oflong-distance network, and
they're generally the high-speedtrains that get from bigger
cities to bigger cities, limitedstops in between each of them,
kind of being the way to getaround the fastest when they're
on time.
We'll save the delays for asecond here.
I had a chance to ride some ofthese back in October when I was
out there to go visit.
(09:13):
Before committing to the move,make sure we weren't making some
grave mistake, and I took anICE train from.
I took two.
Actually, I took one fromStuttgart to Frankfurt.
Actually, I took one from, uh,stuttgart to frankfurt and then,
uh, later in the trip, I tookone from frankfurt to erfurt.
Um, and, yeah, I mean they'reespecially as a, as an american,
(09:34):
I mean they feel pretty amazing.
Uh, you're going, you know, 250kilometers an hour for parts of
it.
Um, you know some of it.
You're going slower as well,but like you know, on the
sections, once you're out of thedowntowns and whatnot, uh, they
can get going pretty quick.
In addition to that, the nextkind of tier down is the IC
routes.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, and these IC routes which are the inner city
routes, they're very similar tothe ICE.
They're still higher speedtrains on better tracks.
They go these similar longdistances but they do make more
stops in between.
So I think of, like the ices issort of these long distance
express routes.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
The ic is going to make more of these um stops at
the, maybe the smaller citiesalong the way too, yeah, and not
even smaller cities like themedium-sized cities along the
way, yeah, and in addition, Imean, like some of them even are
running on, it varies, right,like some of them are running
even on tracks that are mostlynot even high speed too.
So, the ic ones, there's just alot more variability.
Basically, I actually got totake one of these as well, uh,
(10:31):
the smaller city of jena, whichis where jerry and I will be
moving to.
We took one from there all theway to stuttgart, which is a
it's like a long journey, um,but we took it on the, the ic
train and, uh, we actuallyarrived within a couple minutes
of our scheduled arrival time.
So, um, which was nice, becausethe kind of one piece of this
that we haven't talked about yet.
So the, these are kind of likewhat people are using to travel
(10:54):
from city to city.
The ic and the ic, um, delayshave been an issue.
Uh, if you've, you know, lookedinto transit in germany at all,
or you concern can consumetransit content online, you've
probably seen Deutsche Bahndelay content somewhere.
The trains right now onlyarrive on time 66% of the time.
(11:17):
Now, I will say, on time is apretty tight definition in
Germany, the trains that count,and the third of trains that are
delayed is only a delay,starting at six minutes.
So, from being honest, likeit's a very, it's a very
punctual society, yeah, yeah,yeah, and that's not to say that
like they don't have a lot ofdelays that are longer than six
(11:37):
minutes, but a six minute delayto me, like that's basically on
time in austin, that's on timefor in general, everything 15
minutes late's on time in austin, yeah 15 minutes is almost
early in austin for noteven just for transit.
I'm not talking about, I'mtalking about just like doing
anything like.
This is the latest city I'veever been.
I'm gonna have to really adjustmy life moving to germany where
, like you, need to be early tobe on time, basically.
(11:58):
But that's a that's a wholeother thing.
But the reason the these longerdistance trains are actually
running into the delays in a lotof cases is, in a lot of cases,
due to the fact that rail hasbecome a more popular option for
people in recent years.
So as a response, deutsche bonnhas been adding more routes,
(12:18):
more trains to the system, butthe investment in the
infrastructure at the same timeon the tracks, the stations, the
switching, all this sort ofstuff hasn't come in at the same
time.
The German government has beenlagging in the infrastructure
investment.
So as a result, you end up withtrains that get stuck waiting
just outside of the station orin between waiting for a switch.
(12:41):
The German government is nowtrying to play catch up on some
of that.
So there's now a lot ofconstruction that is closing
tracks, which then adds to thedelays, and these things kind of
spiral down.
Now you know if they wanted torun and have a higher on time
performance.
They could do it, but theywould just run less trains.
But at this point they don'twant to do that because you want
(13:03):
to have the trains for peopleto take.
And you end up with a lot oflike happy accidents where you
show up and it's like, oh damn,my train is delayed by 40
minutes, and then you get offyour other train and you're
going to do the transfer andyou're like, oh wait, the train
that was supposed to bescheduled before it was also
delayed for 40 minutes and nowyou're just getting on that
other train.
So, uh and and oftentimes thesetickets are very flexible,
(13:25):
where if you have a ticket fromone destination to another and
you have a delay or somethingand another train is going the
same one like you can just kindof hop on that other train.
So you get a lot of weird stuffgoing on there, but it can work
out.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
So we're talking about three levels, three main
levels of train service.
You have the ICE.
We already covered that.
We have the ICE, which we justcovered.
The next one down is theregional rail.
Yes, um, regional rail.
It's going to be a series ofsmaller operators, so they may
not be under the um deutschebonn logo or branding but they
do sort of roll up into thedeutsche umbrella.
(13:58):
These are going to be servicesthat serve maybe city pairs or
like regional, uh, you knowcollections of cities and they
may not, you know, go to, youknow, from the of cities and
they may not, you know, go to,you know, from the smaller city
all the way to Berlin orsomething.
It's going to connect thesesmaller communities, but
generally they will feed back into the higher tiers of service
(14:18):
so that if you are in one ofthese smaller cities you can
still get to the major cities.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Totally, and even within the kind of regional
trains, they kind of fall intotwo categories as well, in a
very similar fashion to the ICEand the ICE trains.
So you have the RB and the RE.
The RB is just regional bondand the RE is regional express.
They do kind of exactly whatyou'd think.
So the regional express is kindof hitting the more populated
(14:44):
areas along the route that aregoing to have more riders and
everything, and then the, theregional bond, will stop at
every station, essentially alongthe way, for the most part
including, I mean, when we werethere in October some of these
stations are serving reallysmall rural communities, and so
it's nice that they have thatoption to be able to connect
(15:06):
into the rail network.
Even in some of these towns thatin the United States, I mean,
they don't even have a busconnection.
You know what I mean.
There's no way to get there, orin a lot of places in the world
.
So it's important to see this,this sort of service, and again,
just to give a personal example, I was able to use both
regional, regional bond andregional express trains um again
(15:28):
in that same sort of areabetween erfurt and jena, um to
be able to go back and forth andthey have both options.
Basically every half an houryou've got a train going back
and forth um and some of themare kind of alternating between
the rb and the re, leaving somereally small towns in between um
to be able to be connected, youknow, with some sort of access,
(15:48):
but not making it so that everysingle train needs to stop
there necessarily and itconnects to.
You know, erfurt, which Imentioned, which is on one of
the newer high speed lines thatkind of connects across the
country.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So those are our three higher level or higher
tiers of train service thatconnect people all across
Germany.
Then we have our secret fourthlevel, maybe not so secret, but
all of these cities then alsooperate their own local networks
, and so if you're in a Germancity, you're going to see the
U-Bahn.
Those are things like thesubway, really dense urban rail.
(16:23):
You have the S-Bahn, which isgoing to be more like commuter
service, think like some of theAmtrak services on the Northeast
or something, or like Metra inChicago.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And then you have the Strassenbahn, which is more
like a trolley or tram systemthat you would see in the city.
Did I say that correctly?
It was close.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Close enough.
Yeah, honestly, I'm probablysaying it wrong, so it's all
right, I'll get there at somepoint.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Then you also have more unique versions of German
transit, which is sort of likethe Schwebenbahn which I'm
probably going to mispronouncewhich is in Wuppertal, Germany,
just outside of Cologne, and Idid get a chance to travel there
last year and fell in love withthis transit.
It is a suspended rail, sothink it kind of looks like a
(17:13):
subway car, but it is suspendedfrom the top and it follows this
beautiful river valley throughthis really sort of narrow
winding city.
It is the coolest transit I'veever experienced.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, and it's basically like hanging.
It's kind of cool.
It's like an upside downmonorail, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, yeah it's, it's amazing.
Um, honestly, forget gondolas.
Those are old news.
Uh, this schwab and bond fromthe 1800s.
That's the way to go totallyyeah, and it's uh.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
What's really impressive about these like
local networks in especially alot of the bigger cities, is the
bigger cities will feature anew bond and s bond, and in a
lot of cases, they'll have astrassenbahn network of trams
across the city too, and, whenyou like, lay all those out on a
map across the city, I mean and, and then add on buses too.
Right, everything is covered.
(18:02):
Yep, and then you sprinkle ontop of that as well, like the,
the regional trains that havestops to you know, that are like
it's, it's really impressive.
The systems integrate togethervery well.
Um, and it's just, it's exactlywhat you, it's exactly what you
would hope for.
You know what I mean.
It's like, oh, if you're goingto actually plan for this, this
(18:22):
is what you would do on thatnote, one of the comparisons
that I wanted to make was Texascompared to Germany.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Texas is almost twice the size of Germany, which is
wild to think aboutGeographically.
Geographically, yeah, but ifyou place the land area of
Germany over Texas, it wouldbasically take up all of like
central to east Texas, and thatis the most populated part of
our state.
Now, keep in mind, texas has 31million people in it versus
Germany, which has about 83million people and definitely
(18:52):
more density of cities.
But I'm sitting here thinkingGermany has their entire country
covered in this transit network.
We could do half of that inTexas and be completely covered.
We could do a third of that, aquarter.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And basically cover Pardon my French, yeah, 10%.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And basically cover all of the populated areas in
the state of Texas, and we justcan't do it, and it's just
amazing that one country that ishalf the size of our one state
is able to do it.
Some other comparisons that wewant to throw out there the
Frankfurt metro area has apopulation of about 2.7 million
people and they have every layerof this transit network
(19:31):
existing in their city.
So it is well covered.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
The map is.
If you're watching, the map isup here Again, not to tell you
to do this twice if you'relistening, but like literally,
look up a map of the Frankfurtmetro because it's impressive.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, the transit network is extensive and when we
compare that to US metros 2.7million people we're talking US
metro regions.
We have cities like Austin, stLouis, kansas City, san Antonio
All of these cities are similarsize when you look at their
metros Charlotte, orlando,denver there's so many in here
Baltimore, all of these aresimilar in size to Frankfurt.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And then compare the maps, it's really sad it is
really sad and it's not to saythat those places don't have
transit, because they do, and ifyou're interested in seeing
them, I mean some of the citieson that list San Antonio, uh,
austin and Kansas City we havedone episodes on in the past, so
definitely encourage you to gocheck them out.
But, yeah, it's, it's it justlike I don't know, we don't have
(20:27):
an excuse.
You know we've in other recentepisodes I don't know if this
one will have come out yet ornot but an episode that we just
did on some North Carolina stuff.
I mean like it was potentiallytaking five years, ten years, to
just break ground on a BRTproject, not even to finish it.
To break ground Like it'syeah's, yeah, yeah, I don't know
(20:49):
.
I'm definitely very excited.
Uh, again, kind of we mentionedat the beginning of this the
point of us doing this episodespecifically about Germany.
It is where I'll be moving injust a couple months.
So, um, you know that's kind ofthe purpose of doing this
overview.
I'm really excited to be ableto go to a lot of these places,
explore on the ground and kindof, uh, you know our plans that
we're going to do all sorts ofdifferent stuff with the show
(21:10):
moving forward.
But, um, you know, while I'mthere, I hope to be able to go
out and go and record somereally cool transit things going
on there, maybe get someinterviews with folks and then
we'll be able to go to thevirtual couch, essentially, and
talk about them.
So, uh, if you have specificplaces in Germany that you
definitely want to see, orprojects and whatnot there, or
(21:30):
even in Europe broadly, I'mgoing to try to take advantage
of the situation, of the factthat I'm going to be living
there, to travel as much as Ican, because once you're there
it's a lot more affordable toget around than buying those
very, very expensive flightsback and forth.
So, yeah, definitely let usknow.
I'm really excited to dive intoit and even really small cities
like the one that I'm moving to.
So Yena only has a population ofabout 120,000 people.
(21:53):
They have five tram lines.
Now, not all of them are liketheir own dedicated line the
whole time.
I mean, it does kind of runalong some trunk lines as well.
But five tram lines, they have13 bus routes.
In addition to that, along someof the main trunks on the bus
routes, I mean you've gotfrequencies of every five
(22:14):
minutes basically all day Inwhole in that city, again of
120,000 people, the networkserves upwards of 62,000
passengers daily.
Compare that to where we livehere in Austin Cap Metro carries
roughly 70,000 passengers a day, which sounds like it's not
that much different right Nottoo bad, until you realize that
(22:38):
Austin is at least 20 timeslarger in population than Yenna
is.
Yes, so it's just obviously it'svery different, right?
Y know it's a very like densesmall city.
It's very walkable.
35% of daily trips there aretaken on foot, 15% by bike, the
rest are either in a car or onpublic transit.
(22:59):
So, you don't even need ane-bike over there.
I know I'm probably still goingto get one, but you probably
could.
It's a little hilly, so youknow, I feel like I still need
to hold on to my.
I'm still a member of the cultof the e-bike.
We haven't talked about that ina long time.
Yes, but yeah, it's prettyinteresting just to see the
comparisons.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I am excited, though, you're going to Germany, but
before you go, we're alsoplanning an episode right now,
potentially in June, where we'regoing to be able to make some
comparisons to our more denselypopulated parts of the country.
We are working on an episodethat will be an Acela tour from
Boston to Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, and it will be a whole series really, because
we're going to have we'll talkabout the Acela and the kind of
Northeast regional trains we'rehoping to do Boston, Philly and
Baltimore, maybe some additionalthings mixed in there.
So definitely stay tuned forthat.
And if you want to help supportthat trip too, the best way to
be able to do so is via ourPatreon.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Also hit us up.
If you are in Boston,philadelphia or Baltimore, let
us know.
Maybe you can meet us along thealong the way.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Totally.
We definitely want to hear fromyou, but with all of that I
mean yes, a lot of excitingstuff coming up.
Stay tuned for some slightdifferences in how the show is,
but don't worry, we're not goinganywhere.
We're very excited.
I'm excited that a lot of thisis coming up very quickly.
I just got our visas approvedthis week.
(24:18):
From when we're recording this,I don't know exactly when this
will come out, but at thebeginning of May we got our
visas approved.
Very exciting stuff.
With all that being said, ifyou have not liked this video
already, please consider doingso.
It helps us out quite a bit.
Also, leave a comment.
What are you looking forward towith some of the changes on the
show?
Is there anything in Germany orin Europe that you'd like us to
go and talk about and cover?
And again, you can support theshow directly via Patreon by
(24:41):
subscribing or even justchecking out our merch store,
which is available right below.
So, with all that being said,thank you all so much for
watching and enjoy the rest ofyour Transit.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Tangents Tuesday.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.