Flixtrain is on the move. The private German railway company plans to launch new routes across Europe and order 65 new trains for €2.4 billion. We travel from Hamburg to Cologne to see what its service is like.
For Germany (and every country with public service) in the end that means: A private company for the lucrative connections. A publicly funded one for the rest. So capitalism as always…
Deutsche Bahn is getting subsidies for servicing unprofitable routes and still has been cutting back on those massively.
Your scepticism isn’t unfounded, but I think real world experiences are a little more nuanced. Where I live, the private option is often more affordable. But then again, the government owned train company is run for profit.
Flixtrain is usually Cheaper than ice trains
Ugh, this pisses me off. This Semi-Open market means you have the DB Fernverkehr which is not subsidized or anything, but it also has to service routes that are not profitable, so it needs to cross-subsidize, meaning the profitable routes are more expensive than they would be in an open market. So, ideally, you would want to close off the market, but no, we want competition everywhere. So we have companies like FlixTrain who then run the profitable routes, and leave the unprofitable routes to DB Fernverkehr, and then people wonder why their prices go up…
Hard to blame FlixTrain for taking advantage of the situation, though.
Frankly this is a result of negligence by the federal government. The lawmakers could have legally specified areas that would be marked as essential and therefore exempt from Article(s) 12 (and 14) of the constitution. But they didn’t which is why the Federal wheather service lost to Weather.com in front of the German Federal Constitutional court and were henceforth ordered to demand money for their app. An app that uses data collected and paid for by the taxpayer and that is also used by private weather websites.
Exactly!
I’ve been on a Flixtrain some years ago in Sweden, travelling to Stockholm. It was… ok. I mean, it is a train and it was on time. The seats however were the absolute worst to sit on.
Trains on time with places to sit is better than 95% of Deutsche Bahn Travel.
Flixtrain has the same problem as DB when it comes to being on time. Unless it’s a problem with the rolling stock, the problem usually lies with the railway infrastructure and previous delays. In Germany Flixtrain is on the same rails as DB.
This.
No shit. My wife had to travel with DB recently. The delays were so bad that she had to spend the night in a hotel. At least DB comped the hotel.
Do you know “Jet Lag: The Game”? They play travel games. DB’s utterly terrible performance is a running theme anytime they play in Europe.
Same here… It’s the budget option.
