I mean, it's all a question of perspective. The sort of train delay that's objectionable in Germany is so normal that no-one would even notice it in Ireland, say.
Irish Rail defines punctuality as within 10 minutes of schedule for intercity and within 5 minutes of schedule for commuter and metro. Based on that rather generous definition, most lines manage 90-95% punctuality...
We have that in Germany too. Any delay between 0 and 4 minutes 59 seconds is "no delay". Any delay between 5:00 and 9:59 is "5 minutes". Any delay between 10:00 and 14:59 is "10 minutes", and so on...
In Germany the whole fiasco started with the "privatisation" of the Federal Railways (Bundesbahn) in the mid-nineties. Since then, Deutsche Bahn behaves like a private company, but is still 100% owned by the federal government (who sometimes taps them for money), and is three things at once: train operator (in which role it competes with other operators), infrastructure owner (in which role it sells track usage rights to itself and other operators) and station owner (in which role it sells station usage rights to itself and other operators, plus makes a lot of money as landlord at bigger stations while neglecting smaller ones). Which leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest. Mainly, DB is "profit-oriented", i.e. it tends to dislike investing any of its own money in infrastructure expansion or maintenance - all such works must be requested and paid by either the federal government or the state (Bundesland) governments. And since these governments hate to be seen as "subsidizing" a "private company", most of the infrastructure (except for a few shiny new projects that make politicians look good) is just languishing in the state it was almost 30 years ago, with minimal maintenance.
Also fun: a planned stop that was cancelled doesn't count as delayed, it's simply removed from the statistics. (An occasional ∞ delay would really hurt the average.)
Just because some places are worse doesn't mean we should excuse Germany. Trains should be within 5 seconds every single time. With dedicated infrastructure and absolute priority this isn't hard. (I'll make an exception only if the wind is faster than 200km/h, or earthquakes - every other weather event should be normal and designed out - the exact wind speed can be debated of course). It goes without saying that collisions are not acceptable.
> sort of train delay that's objectionable in Germany is so normal that no-one would even notice it in Ireland
New Yorker here. I noticed. Germany's trains were erratically delayed in a way that was frustrating, noticeable and opaque. Our LIRR and Metro North, on the other hand, run on time. As did Trenitalia when I was traveling from Roma to Napoli last week.
Irish Rail defines punctuality as within 10 minutes of schedule for intercity and within 5 minutes of schedule for commuter and metro. Based on that rather generous definition, most lines manage 90-95% punctuality...