Deutsche Bahn is very far from 99% punctuality. Statistics were published only recently and they pointed down once again. But to be fair going by car is hardly better, you can get stuck more or less unexpectedly in most somewhat busy places.
I can't really talk about DB, I rarely take the ICE.
But I also want to point out that I didn't say that public transit is 99% on time, I said I get to my destination on time 99% of the time. Often when a train/tram/subway is late I can just take a different one and still get to my destination on time.
If there is a delay on a long journey, I usually know hours in advance, and I can let people know I'm going to be late. But it's a very rare occurrence in my experience.
This week I had two business trips on ICE trains. It was exactly like in statistics (only 75% trains come on time), one of them delayed by 20 minutes just before departure due to "unauthorized people on the tracks". This was the 3rd incident with DB during my travels this year (before that I had my connection train from Frankfurt cancelled while I was on the 2 hour long flight there).
One of the delays that I experienced with DB couple years ago was related to a complete change of the train route that happened after departure (!). Some unlucky passengers had to leave at the next station and check how they can get to their destinations at Reisezentrum. Travel time was increased by 1 hour for me.
As I said, as an Austrian my experience with DB is limited. All I can say is that public transport here in Austria in my experience is more reliable than taking the car.
It feels like every direction I want to go with my car, there's always construction, with detours, closed exits, or just a section of highway with a 60km/h limit and traffic jams, because they are adding another lane, or building a new bridge, or resurfacing the road, or adding noise protection, or something.
My only experience with ÖBB was a night train to Vienna. It arrived over 2 hours late. Because I continued to Czech I could not even use the refreshment voucher. To be fair the delay occured already in Germany, the train did not even leave the origin in Cologne in time. Afterwards I had to do the paper work work to get 50% or how much it was of my money back. Those who get stuck backed-up on the Autobahn don't get any money back.
Lot of the problems have been created by decades of prioritization of roads over rail. No suprise not everthing goes smoothly if you try to increase capacity on a long neglected system afterwards.
Some predict complete chaos caused by the 9 EUR ticket. Such a cheap price should result in dramatic of demand. But supply can't grow a whole lot on short notice.
Well, I am not in Germany. I'll read it from the news.
