When I traveled to Europe last month for a summer rail adventure, I knew to allow plenty of time for delays.<\/p>\n
I learned that lesson two years ago<\/a> on a similar journey, when one of my trips on the state-owned German railroad Deutsche Bahn was hours late.<\/p>\n What I wasn\u2019t expecting was a DB train that didn\u2019t run at all \u2014 with no warning and zero customer support.<\/p>\n The hypocritical message: We want you to take the train instead of driving or flying, but we\u2019ll make you miserable in the process. \u00a0<\/p>\n During my previous trip, in 2024, a four-hour ride from Cologne to Hamburg turned into a meandering seven-hour journey beset with unexplained detours. \u00a0<\/p>\n That experience mirrored statistics: Only 60% of DB\u2019s long-distance trains run on time.<\/p>\n \u201cDeutsche Bahn now underperforms even the\u00a0worst British train operator,\u201d the Financial Times found last year. \u00a0<\/p>\n Why? Because, much like New York\u2019s 2017 \u201csummer of hell<\/a>,\u201d decades of poor decision-making have caught up with the transit system.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in Germany, it\u2019s been years of hell.<\/p>\n The country neglected its rail network as social-service spending grew. \u00a0<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s making $124 billion in investments \u2014 but upgrades are coming slowly. \u00a0<\/p>\n Fine, I told myself this time: Just don\u2019t rely on same-day connections or anything else requiring punctuality. \u00a0<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t expecting trains that go nowhere. \u00a0<\/p>\n But that\u2019s what happened on what should have been a two-hour fair-weather trip from Brussels to Cologne.\u00a0<\/p>\n The nominal explanation was unplanned track work\u00a0after previous heat waves damaged rails and wires.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not breaking news that heat harms infrastructure<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n The issue is poor communication \u2014 and a lack of fair compensation. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n DB knew this track would be out of commission for days; a competing French-run service, Eurostar, told its customers that trains wouldn\u2019t run on that stretch for at least the rest of that week.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet DB continued to sell tickets for trains it knew wouldn\u2019t go anywhere, and issued misleading updates on its app past the last minute.\u00a0<\/p>\n After my train was canceled, the app attempted to hoodwink me into sitting around the train station for another four hours \u2014 to wait for another train that would also be canceled. \u00a0<\/p>\n A\u00a0Brussels station agent suggested an alternative: I could continue as far as possible on Belgian rail, then try my luck with replacement buses where the line stopped just short of Germany. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So I took commuter rail east through Belgium.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n At the last stop, a little place called Welkenraedt, I found hundreds of wheelie-bag-toting passengers, guarded by armed, flak-jacketed Belgian police, waiting\u00a0for buses to take them farther. \u00a0<\/p>\n Clearly I wasn\u2019t DB\u2019s only victim.<\/p>\n After an hour watching too many people get on too few buses while waiting fruitlessly for a DB update, I took a $380 Uber across the border. (The Uber driver was so excited that he called his daughter to marvel: \u201cAllemagne!\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Annoyed, I applied for \u201ccompensation\u201d through DB\u2019s cumbersome online form \u2014 and got even more outraged.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Amazingly, when DB cancels not only your train but all trains for days, it doesn\u2019t offer an automatic refund.<\/p>\n Its only mechanism for online compensation involves a bank payment that requires a type of account number Americans don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n (Oh, you can get a voucher for a future trip \u2014 not much help for a foreign visitor.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n When I inquired again a week later, I received an email saying DB might answer my email soon. \u00a0<\/p>\n After nearly a month, DB offered me not a refund, but a voucher for half the price of my train ride. \u00a0<\/p>\n I called to complain ($72, thanks to 15 minutes on hold) to learn that I should . . . write them a letter. \u00a0<\/p>\n And pay to mail it to Germany.\u00a0<\/p>\n The week of the Cologne debacle, DB informed me of another change: The Berlin-to-Paris train I\u2019d booked for two weeks later wouldn\u2019t run, either.<\/p>\n This cancellation seemed to have nothing to do with weather; it was just . . . because. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And again, no automatic refund was forthcoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n A big part of making transit systems more appealing to riders has nothing to do with infrastructure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0customer service: You\u2019ve got to tell people what\u2019s going on, and you\u2019ve got to make amends when you can\u2019t deliver what you\u2019ve promised.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n