The railway annoys customers with unpunctuality, dirty trains and too few toilets, a survey found

Too dirty, too little, too late: According to a survey, passengers in Germany are annoyed by dirty trains and stations, as well as a lack of restrooms, during their travels. In addition to the ongoing issue of unpunctuality, communication between railways and passengers is also lacking. This is the finding of a representative survey conducted by the Institute for Applied Social Sciences (infas) on behalf of the Federal Network Agency.

Among other things, a good third of respondents (34 percent) criticized dirty train stations and local trains. They also considered the facilities and availability of restrooms to be inadequate. More than half of respondents (52 percent) complained about the facilities in restrooms at train stations, and almost a fifth would like to see improvements. Local trains also performed worse than long-distance ICE and IC trains.

Less surprising is that passengers are upset about the unreliability of trains. More than 80 percent of respondents prefer reliable connections to more frequent trains. "The focus of transport planning should not be on increasing service density, but rather on improving timetable stability," the Federal Network Agency stated.

Respondents also stated that they feel better advised by apps for travel information than by announcements or on-site displays - the latter showed significantly higher levels of dissatisfaction.

The survey was conducted between September and November, interviewing around 2,000 travelers who had traveled by train in the previous three months.

RND/dpa