The article focus mainly on high speed rail (ICE), which might be the least bad. I my experience, regional and commuter trains are even more of a mess.
Cool to see the exact figures, thanks. Although strange they consider a regional train late from 6 minutes delayed, while in the article they mentioned 5 minutes for ICE.
They’re actually different companies with different rules and different management, under the umbrella of one corporation, which is 100% owned by the state. Welcome to Germany.
6 minutes is the European standard for ‘late’, and I suspect the article just made a typo and meant to say “only 60% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains arrived five minutes late or less” instead of “only 60% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains arrived less than five minutes late”.
However, it’s actually a double mistake, because for Fernverkehr (long distance travel), DB actually measures their delays in a totally differnt way from the regional trains. Instead of measuring how late each train is leaving the station, they instead they measure their punctuality based on how late each passenger is arriving at their final destination. This is only possible because people actually buy individual tickets for each journey on an ICE so they’re actually able to track this information.
The article focus mainly on high speed rail (ICE), which might be the least bad. I my experience, regional and commuter trains are even more of a mess.
DB Regio reports an 89% punctuality figure for 2025 (down 1% from 2024). https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lagebericht/entwicklung-der-geschaeftsfelder/geschaeftsfeld-db-regio/entwicklung-im-berichtsjahr/
I don’t doubt there are certain regions or lines where the regional and commuter trains are worse than your average ICE, but it’s not the norm.
Cool to see the exact figures, thanks. Although strange they consider a regional train late from 6 minutes delayed, while in the article they mentioned 5 minutes for ICE.
They’re actually different companies with different rules and different management, under the umbrella of one corporation, which is 100% owned by the state. Welcome to Germany.
6 minutes is the European standard for ‘late’, and I suspect the article just made a typo and meant to say “only 60% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains arrived five minutes late or less” instead of “only 60% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains arrived less than five minutes late”.
However, it’s actually a double mistake, because for Fernverkehr (long distance travel), DB actually measures their delays in a totally differnt way from the regional trains. Instead of measuring how late each train is leaving the station, they instead they measure their punctuality based on how late each passenger is arriving at their final destination. This is only possible because people actually buy individual tickets for each journey on an ICE so they’re actually able to track this information.
On the per-passenger metric, they say arriving at your final destination less than 15 minutes late is “punctual”: https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lagebericht/entwicklung-der-geschaeftsfelder/geschaeftsfeld-db-fernverkehr/entwicklung-im-berichtsjahr/
This is the metric with which they hit only 60%