In German political terms this year of 2011 was always going to be about not any grand national-level election to (possibly) change the faces at the very top, but rather a very numerous series of elections at lower levels of that country’s federal system, none of them of decisive importance in itself but collectively fully capable of pointing to the likely result of the next truly national-level election, scheduled for 2012.

The latest of these occurred last Sunday (among other places) in Baden-Württemberg, the “other” southern federal German state (i.e. the one that’s not Bavaria), and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party continued its long record of performing poorly in such local elections. To give you a pretty precise idea of what exercises voters in that particular prosperous corner of Germany, it’s generally agreed that the election revolved around just two issues: Fukushima (i.e. “nuclear power is dangerous”) and Stuttgart 21. The Green Party, especially, was on the “correct” side of both questions; so the Green Party won big, more than doubling its share of the vote and climbing to a position where it can lead a coalition state government together with its traditional political ally, the Social Democrat Party. (more…)

I recently covered here the Deutsche Bundesbahn’s troubles this year with operating their trains satisfactorily in extreme-ish weather, both hot and cold. But – How could I forget? – there has always been a bigger problem with the German trains, one that shows its ugly face year-round: they’re damned expensive! Now, anyone familiar at all with transportation and/or public-sector economics will have already known about this, whether s/he has ever travelled on the Bundesbahn or not, for this is an affliction shared by most public monopoly transportation systems requiring substantial prior capital investment (therefore also e.g. for city public transport systems): since it’s generally messy and often even politically unpopular to play the Grinch and show any resistance to escalating wage-demands from unions representing the labor required to keep these systems running, the costs and therefore ticket-prices inevitably rise higher than the rate of inflation. For myself, then, as much as I otherwise like the German trains, I tend to only travel on them as a result of some special offer and/or early booking which offers considerable savings. (more…)

Those (like me) who like to travel through Germany by train every so often were displeased last summer to hear about the misadventures involving malfunctioning on-board cooling units during warm days leading, in some cases, to passengers even being evacuated due to dehydration. (Indeed, I experienced something like that personally – i.e. air conditioning clearly not operating within a number of cars making up a packed long-distance train – but fortunately, although it was June, the day was not that hot so that at least no one actually became sick, to my knowledge.) The German government wasn’t so happy, either, and let the semi-private national railroad company, Deutsche Bahn, know that it needed to up its performance.

Now European weather has flipped the challenges it presents from hot to cold, and an article out now from the newsmagazine Focus shows how Deutsche Bahn is faring: Problems were partly internal: Winter chaos on the rails. Don’t worry: we’re not talking here about passengers suffering frostbite or hypothermia – “Entschuldigung, ve haff no more zeats affailable, ve must schtrap you zu de train-roof!” – but during the difficult spell of winter weather a few weeks ago there were apparently many trains canceled or at least running late – according to one report, up to 80% among long-distance service.

The piece features up top a grim-looking head-shot of Rüdiger Grube, Deutsche Bahn’s chairman, and it’s main message is yes, he acknowledges (once again) the performance deficiencies: “We have to get even better. Not the least for that reason we plan billions in investments in a new fleet of IC and ICE [trains – the IC are long-distance within Germany, ICE are that plus some international routes but are the high-speed trains].” The piece’s secondary message comes from German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer, who threatens “consequences” and rejects the German winter as any excuse.

So could the fault really lie in the equipment, i.e. the trains, as Grube maintains? On the one hand, that could be an understandable explanation of why rail service there can’t handle extremes of heat and cold. On the other – this is Germany, and we’re talking about German technology! Top standard, by definition, exported to eager customers throughout the world!

Over here on the European continent we perhaps a bit self-righteously presume that we’re in a somewhat better position to act against global warning – and to deal with the inevitable coming gasoline price-hikes, whether there is a war with Iran or no – than, say, North America due to a transport network that is not so predicated on the personal automobile. But then the German newspaper-of-record, the FAZ, comes out like it did today with an article entitled Train Travel Does Not Protect the Environment. (more…)