The Nürnberg zones

The VGN has the benefit of being yuge at least.

I think Brandenburg's is the whole state + Berlin. So that's even better.

Not like the Deutschlandticket has any real future unfortunately. Gotta see if it at least survives the Merz government.

As for DB - the ICE are horrible when it comes to reliability, but I found the regional trains actually mostly pretty good. Even if they have the tendency to be kinda dirty and always have broken toilets.

When I saw "American rail" the first and only thought I had was of a porn parody of a movie: An American Rail: Fievel Bangs West.

I live around the Twin Cities metro of Minnesota (two cities split by a river), which installed its first passenger light rail about 20 years ago. I recently moved from the north suburbs to the south side of town. I was very excited to be able to drive 10 minutes east on the freeway to my buddy’s house within walking distance of a station to take the 10 minute light rail ride downtown for a basketball game. Previously I would have driven 20-40 minutes (depending on traffic congestion) to pay $20 to use a parking ramp because the light rail doesn’t extend north.

Over the last 20 years they have extended the rail between the airport/Mall of America on the south side to the downtown of one city, and connected that downtown to the downtown of the other city across the river. If you live anywhere north of the city proper, or more than a few miles away from the one line running south, there is little reason to use the rail system over driving the whole way. If you do though, it’s pretty great.

That’s just been my experience, my understanding is some larger cities (Chicago and NYC are what come to mind) have more robust rail systems, but many cities (mine at least) have limited access for most people living in them.

American transport outside of subway systems is literally unusable in most cases. The bus in my city of 1M+ people takes 1.5 hours to go about 20 minutes of distance by car. In some cases I can beat the bus to a destination on my bicycle.

Come to Greece we will make you cry

(3 whole lines of metro (U-Bahn) and buses that come once every 30 minutes)

Public transport in the US is when they bring that big police box van to arrest everyone.

Ok yeah DB has been woefully underfunded for decades thanks to auto industry lobbying and so now half the trains are late or cancelled, but the fact that you even can get from any city to any other city by train and then get to anywhere within each city by bus/tram is mind blowing to some of us that didn't grow up in Europe. There are lots of places where you basically can't live without a car, it's insane.

My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.

To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it's about an hour walk to either of those.

The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.

United States has rails?

The only area I know well is the NW corner of the USA, but there is indeed public transit. I can't say how it compares to even other parts of the US, let alone other countries, but I can say that in the urban and suburban areas it's generally possible to walk or bike to a bus stop and with some transfers, get within a walkable or bicycle-able distance of where you are going. Some rural areas have a system called "dial-a-ride" which are basically on-demand small buses if I understand correctly. Similar systems exist for people with disabilities in the urban areas also.

Besides buses there are also ferries, and local train systems (light rail) which connect neighborhoods and cities in the same major metropolitan area. Trains between major metros (such as between states) also exist, but typically it's just not worth it: If you aren't going to just drive it by car, then flying is both faster and cheaper than the train, and flying isn't cheap.

There are also commuter trains between the downtowns of major (nearby) cities separate from the light rail, but I've never actually tried that myself.

It's pretty much non-existent

the buses in my area are physically pretty nice but they are infrequent and my friends and I have learned it is rare to be able to ride the bus without getting sexually harassed by a stranger on the bus

I took Amtrak long distance once, as a "it can't be that bad, can it?"

It was a 12 hour trip that got delayed 3+ hours in 30c heat and the car I was in had its A/C broken for ~3/4 of the trip.

Probably could have driven for 8-10 hours instead for cheaper and cooler.