Deutsche Bahn Construction Information Website
 

Good old DB. To help friends planning a rail journey in Germany, and having heard another friend's tale of miserable snowballing delays and reroutings, I went to the page on DB's English-language site where I've consulted specific construction news in English in the past (https://int.bahn.de/en/booking-infor...truction-sites).

Here's what it currently says:

Important information

Please note that our information on Deutsche Bahn construction sites has been summarised in a new Internet portal with immediate effect. This new portal will only be available in German until further notice.
Switch to the new construction site portal: https://www.bahn.de/bauarbeiten

​​DB's customer-friendliness at its best.

What did you expect ? The official language of Germany is......German. Businesses don't have to provide information in English.

Reliability and punctuality and DB are not synonyms- that would belong to CFF/SBB. Always have a Plan B and allow for delays and deviations.

And honestly, using tools to translate websites are not that uncommon ...

For example just use https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&op=websites or DeepL or whatever you like.

And about Deutsche Bahn being unreliable: I travel weekly and rarely have a delay that forces me to postpone a meeting, reschedule a connection or (heaven forbid) not be at home in my favourite pub on time in the evening.
Maybe I'm an exception, but it seems to me that it's somehow ‘fashionable’ to simply complain about the German railway in general and about everything connected with train travel. I've only ever noticed this from Germans, but it seems to be an international trend now ...

I tried the Google Translate tool the other day with the Bahn link and it didn’t work. Didn’t pursue it further since I don’t need the translation.

I agree that there is somewhat of an echo chamber. There probably are more delays and more construction sites (*). But I think most people just like to complain and rehash what they heard/read somewhere, without a ton of personal data points. I take trains in Germany maybe 3-5 times a year, and yes, I have experienced delays and misconnects. But I also experience delays with air travel, so for me it’s just part of the travel experience. I guess I am not spoiled by rail travel in Switzerland :)

(*) and the whole point of construction sites is to make the system more reliable. Autobahn travel can be impacted by construction sites as well.

Our remote colleagues always have delays and cancellations when travelling to the office in Frankfurt/Main or to the "upper" headquarters in Hanovre using DB.....

I remember the poor soul that lives outside Hanovre and had to come into the office here in Frankfurt, he left before 4 in the morning to eventually arrive around 9, since one of his connections always gets cancelled or delayed. And that's about once a month we all gather in the office. Another colleague living near Lake Constance just drives to the office now, cuz it takes longer to take the train with all the correspondances and delays.

All this would be somewhat more acceptable, if the tickets weren't so darn expensive at the same time !

Yeah, definitely the exception. I travel by trains weekly and my on time rate is 50%, which is a bit less than official DB stats but I pass by an area which is affected to delays nearly constantly.
As for reliability, DB closed the Riedbahn for 6 months last year, renovating it completely and opening it mid December 2024. Two weeks ago I arrived with 2 hours delay at FRA because of .... failure and reparations needed on the Riedbahn.
I am a big fan of DB, nevertheless my current advice for FRA-DUS is to fly, not to take the train.

Of course they don't have to. But my point was that DB actually had been posting the information in English before replacing that page with a new German-language-only portal. Who knows what the rationale was for making that change, making the site less convenient for non-German-speaking travellers (which, by the way, includes many persons who do not have English as a first language but do understand it.)