UPDATE: This is a ranking from the point of view of an independent traveler
- Russia. It is very cheap and very comfortable in long distances. You have train attendances and a samovar with hot water in each cart. Trains are not fast but there is no need because distances are just too large and cities are one overnight hop from each other. Trains are extremely punctual because trains have a very flexible schedule and a lot of margin. The bad part is that the system is outdated and very complicated to use if you can’t read cirillic. You cannot buy tickets online.
- Italy Trains are old, dirty and slow but it is very cheap and you pay by kilometer.
- China. This is similar to the Russian system, but totally new. They have cheap, modern sleeper trains for the long distances. These ones have a similar configuration to the Russian trains but cleaner and newer. They also have a lot of high speed trains. Those ones are cheap, fast and new. It is the railway system with most modern technology on the rails and they even have magnetic trains that can travel really fast (450km/h). The bad thing is that you can only buy tickets 10 days in advance and only from the departing point and you cannot buy tickets online.
- Japan & South Korea. Fast trains are really fast and cheap (With special tourist passes)
- Germany. Tickets are expensive. Trains are the main transportation system… and it seems to be overloaded. The train system is a monopoly and there are not a lot of long distance bus routes. The people is forced to alternative methods like car sharing or hithhiking, which in my experience are sometimes more reliable that trains. The good part about the German system: it’s extremely foreing friendly because there is a lot of information available about what is going on with your train. It is a very developed train system that operates like an traditional airline with all the advantages and disadvantages.
- Austria. OBB has all the features of BAHN.DE. But it is even more expensive.
- Spain. Regional trains are very slow and expensive. Fast trains are very fast and very expensive and frequently fully booked. All tickets reserve a seat which increases price and makes impossible to take the train if there are no seats left. I traveled frequently in fully booked trains with a lot of seats left because people didn’t show up. The website is a complete disaster.
The big locomotive in Ulan Ude, Russia
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While I agree with your comments about the terrible and inflexible Spanish railway system I have to fully disagree with you about Germany.
From a tourist perspective it may be as you say but once you understand all the tricks (and you consider the average salary of the country when comparing prices) the system is not so bad.
Regular travelers can get 50% always by getting the bahncard50 membership (230 euros a year). If you plan in advance you can get huge discounts which can be combined with the Bahncard25 membership (57 euros a year). Plus all the special offers (e.g. weekend ticket for groups, night trains…). The key is booking in advance.
The system is not overloaded. I’m always shock about the number of options you have every day between any two cities. And booking is not mandatory, I don’t book 90% of the times and I never have any problem (again the trick is knowing which trains may be potentially full which are also highlighted in the web).
Even if it looks like, I’m not pay by the Deutsche Bahn, but I’m fascinated by their IT system, I have never seen anything like this. Is funny how much money Spain invest in expensive trains while they could dramatically improve the system and boost mobility by just having an information system half as good as the German one.
This ranking is for the independent traveler but it was never mentioned in the post. Independent travelers are seriously price sensitive… and the ticket at non discounted retail price is absurdly expensive. If you are living in Germany you can get a discount card and reduce up to 70% the ticket price. As trains are the de-facto only option for (land) travel for the independent tourist you need to plan in advance and stick to the plan or be flexible and pay the exorbitant tickets at retail price.
However I agree with you on the information level. They know exactly what is going on with each train and they can optimize routes to increase the capacity. The German railway system is the core of the European goods transportation system.
Bahn.de is a transportation monopoly. They don’t have real competition on the passenger service and that’s why they are more motivated to improve the service and use better technology to increase capacity and transport *more*. Germans are happy with the status quo because if they don’t move a lot they just use the car and if they move a lot they buy a bahncard 50% (which is super cheap). The only people that suffer the prices are the non-packaged tourists which are a minority, they don’t spend a lot and they don’t have voting rights.
It would be interesting to see statistics to see what’s the percentage of tickets sold at full retail price. My guess is that it is not higher than 30% which means that they can actually reduce the price without losing profit. Railway is NOT an Airline. Being a monopoly as it is, they should use the cargo contracts (highly profitable) to subsidize the passenger service (which should always be running at a loss).
I’d like to add some links that will be useful for the independent traveler while using trains in Germany.
I think the problem is that there are many ways of getting cheaper tickets but it’s sometimes hard to find out what the cheapest way would be. I think the only time you actually have to pay the full price is if you just jump onto an ICE without a ticket and buy it in the train.
The two most important criteria for traveling cheap on the Deutsche Bahn is
a) planning
b) avoiding the ICE (fast train) and taking the RE or RB (regional trains)
With this ticket you can travel throughout Germany whereever you want (Kiel to Munich if you wish) on one day for 42 Euros and every further person up to 5 persons costs 6 Euros.
http://www.bahn.de/regional/view/regionen/freizeit/quer-durchs-land.shtml
If you are staying within one Bundesland it will be cheaper to take a “Länderticket”, so e.g. you can travel everywhere in Bavaria for 21 Euros on one day.
http://www.bahn.de/regional/view/regionen/freizeit/laendertickets.shtml
And this page here gives you a general overview of saving money with the Bahn(you can select the language at the top of the page):
http://www.bahn.de/p/view/angebot/sparpreis/spartickets.shtml
Thanks Christina