I'm going to travel to Seattle tomorrow. Flight LH490 departs from Frankfurt at 10:20.
There's a train station in easy (8 minutes) walking distance from my house and I could, in theory, get on the RE13 train at 07:22, be on Düsseldorf at 08:09 and then get into the ICE529 "Sprinter" that arrives at Frankfurt Airport 09:33. Since I've got Lufthansa Senator status and travel with hand luggage, I'd easily be at the gate in time for boarding. The "Rail & Fly" ticket for this costs €60, in 1st class on the train.
Instead, I will be picked up by a taxi on hour earlier and go to Düsseldorf airport for a 08:25 flight to Frankfurt. The taxi ride will cost ~€90.
That sounds dumb, but as most people in Germany would tell you, betting on that train connection would be crazy. The regional train line operated by Eurobahn has chronic staffing and technical issues and, indeed, is only running a replacement bus service tomorrow. The ICE high-speed train services run by Deutsche Bahn are notoriously and unpredictably late, as one can see in the stats for ICE529 as an example.
Germans are famously on time, but the German railway system isn't. It has been systematically run into the ground by "privatization" which left the company 100% in possession of the federal government, but with lavish salaries and boni paid to executives who have been rewarded for dramatically cut services and investments. It's no longer functional as a reliable business travel infrastructure. I would have loved to avoid the 250km domestic flight to Frankfurt, but doing so would require a night's stay at an airport hotel in Frankfurt. I have done that several times already, but I have Sunday afternoon plans and am not going to sacrifice them to Deutsche Bahn.
