The public transportation system of Frankfurt (Main) is certainly screwed up. Delays-a-plenty cause aggravation for all passengers and test my patience every day.
Before I explain the problem let me quickly introduce you to the public transportation system of Frankfurt. In case you do not know: Like all German cities that I am aware of, we have two types of underground – one called S-Bahn (from Stadtbahn, City Train) and U-Bahn (Untergrundbahn, Underground Train). While the U-Bahn natrually tends to be underground (doh) and both employ different train models there really isn’t much of a practical difference between the two services.
In Frankfurt, we have trams in addition to these two. The entire collection operates jointly under the monicker RMV – the Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund.
Anyway, the whole system is seriously broken. I am not actually sure what the cause is – ancient engines prone to breakdown seem to contribute as much as a horrible track design where all S-Bahn lines have to use one track for various stations, resaulting in a nice backlog if any of the lines is delayed. Personally, I suspect incompetence in the RMV. But whatever the real cause of the problem, I am certainly suffering from it. Every week, I am delayed by a total of about sixty to ninety minutes by RMV delays of various kinds. It adds up quickly because if you are delayed at one point, you will miss a connecting train or a bus. There really is no pattern – the delays seem to be universal. It’s a rare day when I arrive at work exactly at the time I had intended to, and I have actually begun to leave home about 30 minutes early in anticipation of delays.
At one day, the 8:02 subway to the airport was not only 10 minutes late – the clever people of RMV had made it half the usual length. The trains are very, very crowded on normal days due to the large number of people who want to go to work in Niederrad; and on this particular day you can imagine that the subway was so crowded that a lot of us just didn’t fit in there anymore. It was worse than those images you’ve seen of japanese subways during rush-hour.
Worst of all, if you complain, you do not even get an “we’re sorry” reply. Bah.
Needless to say, the entire thing annoys me just a little bit. I consider the RMV to be a definite reason why Frankfurt sucks. What good is public transportation if it doesn’t work? If it was any worse than it already is, I’d be forced to get a car afterall.
I’m going to try taking the bus to the airport soon, maybe that works better than the subway.
