Talk:Berlin S-Bahn

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Caroline, shall we mention -- for those of us who don't sprechen any Deutsch that the U and S things are underground and surface railways systems?

I'm also thinking of moving the U-bahn and S-bahn articles to more English-sounding names. But I'd like to hear what you think, first. --Uncle Ed 20:57, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the absence of any objections, I plan to merge both articles into List of Berlin metro stations -- using for my model the title of List of Lisbon metro stations.

I hope we can link all these metro/underground/subway/commuter rail articles in some organized way. --Uncle Ed 16:08, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I notice that no one has objected to these year-old comments, and that the proposed move hasn't happened anyway, but I'd still like to register my objections to the proposal:
  • The origin of the "U" in U-Bahn may be "unterground", but there are extensive elevanted and at-grade sections.
  • The origin of the "S" in S-Bahn is actually not entirely clear. Some say it's "stadtbahn" (city train), others "schnellbahn" (fast train). Whatever it is, it doesn't have anything to do with "surface" and in fact the S-Bahn too has extensive underground sections.
  • There really isn't any "more English-sounding" name for these systems that would be useful as an identifier. "U-Bahn" and "S-Bahn" have in essence become proper nouns borrowed freely into English. I'm a native English speaker who lived in Berlin for some months and the English-speaking expats there universally said "U-Bahn" and "S-Bahn".
  • The two systems, while interconnected and interrelated, are also distinct both historically and operationally, and should have their own articles.
--Jfruh 19:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the last comments. There are some things that just can´t be translated. The terms U-Bahn and S-Bahn are nationally known in Germany, similar to Subway in the USA. This is different to the UK situation where the Term "Underground" is only valid for the LUL system in London. Greetings from BerlinIsarSteve 11:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

@Jfru:

  • "U-Bahn" stands for "Untergrundbahn".
  • "S-Bahn" stands for "Stadtschnellbahn". It was originally proposed as "SS-Bahn" (that was before the nazi era), but one of the S got dropped early on. This is well documented.

Anorak2 11:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

American Forces under Four-Power Occupation[edit]

I know anecdotally (from having been there at the time) that Western occupation forces were forbidden to ride the S-Bahn during the latter portion of the Four Power days, due to its GDR control. I think that this needs to be in the article, but my having been there could conceivably represent original research and would love for someone to document this from a published source.

Flooding of the Nord-Süd-Bahn?[edit]

Do we have documentation for the claim in the article that the Nord-Süd-Bahn was flooded by SS troops during the Battle of Berlin? I'm not that knowledgeable about what happened in Berlin during that period, but it's always been my understanding that exactly what happened with this flooding -- including who is responsible, the Germans or the Allies -- is not definitely known. --Tkynerd 15:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

West Berlin S-Bahn Operations by BVG (West) - until 1990 or 1994/95?[edit]

Did the (then West Berlin) BVG run the S-Bahn networks in West Berlin until reunification in 1990 or 1994 when Deutsche Bahn AG was created? (Some say it was 1995.) Certain literatures and/or pages suggested from reunification, the divided S-Bahn networks were immediately reunified and the [ex-GDR] DR ran the whole system until the Deutsche Bahn's creation, others state the BVG kept on running the S-Bahn in the former West Berlin area until 1994/95. There is very little English literatures on this topic, and thus any answers from those who have first hand info will be greatly appreciated. --JNZ 19:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While thy don't offer definitive answers, the historic maps you can find here are interesting and offer clues. In March of 1990, with the wall down but Germany not yet unified, none of the S- or U-Bahn lines in the East are given numbers like the ones in the west, and all lines coming from both directions still terminate at Friedrichstrasse, as they did before the wall came down. In November 1990, just a month after unification, the U-Bahn lines have line numbers in both parts of the city; some S-Bahn lines now cross the old border, and those lines have numbers like the ones wholly in the West, but the lines wholly in the East do not. By June of 1991, all lines throughout the city have numbers in the scheme that has lasted to this day. Not sure if this denotes actual unification of operations or if it was just a branding exercize to make travel less complicated. --Jfruh (talk) 20:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting observation. However, the the line numbering system of all public transport was restructured in 1991 to integrate East and West Berlin and the suburbs, but operators continued to be separate. This is true today (the integrated line numbering and fare system has extended over all of Brandenburg meanwhile with many different council bus networks and railway operators taking part), even though BVG (West) and BVB (East) have since merged and the Reichsbahn has ceased to exist. Anorak2 15:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After the wall came down and the first broken links had been re-established (Friedrichstraße on July 1 1990 was the earliest) BVG and Reichsbahn cooperated intensively and gave passengers an impression that the network was as one already.
BVG continued to operate part of the network though, but since 1990 the dividing line was not the former wall. Instead Reichsbahn and BVG operated individual lines end-to-end, both into the "foreign" territory of the other side. For example S2 was all-BVG even after it was extended northward and southward into Brandenburg/former GDR territory. The main east-west route (Stadtbahn) was a joint operation. Individual trains were operated by either BVG or Reichsbahn end-to-end on the same tracks.
This situation ended on January 1, 1994. From then on it was the new privatised Deutsche Bahn AG in all of Berlin. BVG does not operate S-Bahns since then, and the Reichsbahn ceased to exist. Anorak2 15:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the information. I have included the main points in the main article. --JNZ 22:54, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Number of stations?[edit]

An anonymous editor just changed the number of stations from 165 to 166, using "update" as the edit summary. Has a new station opened? Can anyone cite a source for the number of stations there are? --Jfruh (talk) 16:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I see now that an infill station opened at Berlin Julius-Leber-Brücke railway station this week. --Jfruh (talk) 17:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Merger of different articles?[edit]

Is there a need to have an article for Berlin_Stadtbahn and for Berlin_S-Bahn? Isn't this the same system? I really feel that these articles should be merged or redirected to each other.

Technically, the Stadtbahn is one of the main trunk lines for the S-Bahn (along with the Ringbahn and the Nordsudbahn). Whether it merits its own article is up for debate but we, for instance, have an article for the Berlin U-Bahn as well as articles for each of the individual lines, so it's not unheard of to give more detailed treatment of one aspect of a subways system in a separate article. --Jfruh (talk) 03:04, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the Ringbahn has its own article too. --Jfruh (talk) 03:05, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Stadtbahn and the S-Bahn are definitely not the same thing. The Stadtbahn is an elevated east-west railway route across central berlin. It has four tracks and carries passenger trains of all types from S-Bahn to international expresses. The S-Bahn is a network of suburban trains that extends out into the suburbs and uses several different routes across central Berlin, of which the Stadtbahn is only one. Neither is a subset of the other, and overlap is fairly minimal. -- Starbois (talk) 11:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2009 service reductions[edit]

Thanks to Valenciano for adding more detail and cites on the ongoing issues. However I'm not convinced that this section tells the full, unbiased story. It is clear on when problems happened, but not very clear on resolutions.

A rigorous reading of the text would appear to indicate that as of September 2009, only one quarter of previously scheduled trains have operated, and that this position is still not resolved. Having been in Berlin last week, and used the S-Bahn on several occasions, I find that a bit difficult to believe. For example the east-west S-Bahn line through the centre (on the Stadtbahn) was running 18 trains per hour (2 routes at 10 minute intervals, and 2 at 20 minute intervals). If that is only a quarter of the pre-2009 schedule, this would imply 72 trains per hour, or a train every 50 seconds!.

I'm quite happy to believe that there are still problems, but clearly there has also been some degree of recovery from the worst of 2009. How best to explain this?. -- Starbois (talk) 11:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As it happens, just saw an article that answered this. Apparently by Spring this year, they were running 420 train sets compared to 500 needed for a full service. That is a 16% reduction, still an issue, but a lot less than the 75% reduction that the article was implying was still the case, and passes the reductio ad abserdum test that I applied above. I have updated the section with a cite. -- Starbois (talk) 13:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

'Ridership'[edit]

What does "daily ridership" mean? "Ridership" isn't an English or a German word.

"Ridership" is an English word used in transit contexts to mean "number of riders." See this document from the American Public Trasportation Assocation, for instance. --Jfruh (talk) 02:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Templates[edit]

This article needs some reworking, as it seems to exceed the template transclusion limit. Useddenim (talk) 13:10, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In this edit, I replaced {{Berlin S-Bahn route diagram|collapse=yes}} with {{subst:Berlin S-Bahn route diagram|collapse=yes}}. For more information, see Help:Template#Template limits and Wikipedia:Substitution. This added quite a bit to the page source, but now the references and templates at the bottom of the page show up. - Paul2520 (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, and I was wondering why the recent edits to the template do not show in the article despite purging the cache. Template substitution is new to me, would anyone care to explain what is the correct way to "refresh" the "template" now? I'd go with removing the whole diagram from the source and inserting the latter code snippet from the previous reply, but I'd rather ask first. Calling User:Paul2520  — ⟨✆​∣µzdzisław∣⚒​⟩ 14:24, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Uzdzislaw. So if you add {{Berlin S-Bahn route diagram|collapse=yes}} to that page, it then is added to Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, since Template:Berlin S-Bahn route diagram itself includes many templates. What I had done was instead add {{subst:Berlin S-Bahn route diagram|collapse=yes}} which substitutes (see Template:Subst) the template (i.e., adds the code at the current point in time). In other words, it would have to be added again to see changes to the template.
I would urge you to try replacing the relevant code in the article with {{Berlin S-Bahn route diagram|collapse=yes}}. See in the article preview how references will not be rendered because template size has been exceeded.
I recognize that substituting the template is not ideal, but I haven't seen an ideal solution for this issue yet. = paul2520 (talk) 15:10, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I understand the rationale behind this solution (I've seen the discussion on the articles exceeding limits elsewhere), I was just asking how to proceed in this case, given that there have been several updates to this template in the intervening period. I will substitute the code in a minute, although I cannot avoid wondering if there were a bot that could do stuff like this, say, once a day if there have been changes to the template.
Also I am maybe just surprised that this is a problem for the S-Bahn, but not for Berlin U-Bahn where the RDT is, at least at a glance, of very similar size. Is the new(ish) Template:Routemap more lightweight? If so, maybe migrating this template to it would solve the problem?  — ⟨✆​∣µzdzisław∣⚒​⟩ 17:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Permanently fixed, now that {{Berlin S-Bahn route diagram}} has been converted to {{Routemap}}. Useddenim (talk) 15:01, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Route Diagramme for proposed line S21[edit]

The only route diagramme visible by default on the page is of the planned line S21, but that is just captioned, as part of the Infobox there, "Berlin S-Bahn". It really isn't clear enough that it is the planned line (it is only when you edit the page that it becomes crystal clear that it is within the an infobox in the section "Planning of line S21 (Second Nord-Süd Bahn: first stage)", and I spent quite some time looking at it confused, because it didn't seem to fit with what I knew or other diagrammes and wasn't sufficiently explained. I can't see any way to change the caption for the infobox, and am not sure how else to make it less confusing, apart from just deleting/hiding it all. DrArsenal (talk) 09:57, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It wast simply a matter of adding |name=Proposed Line S21 to the {{Infobox}}. Useddenim (talk) 10:32, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Easy when you know how. Thanks. DrArsenal (talk) 21:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion[edit]

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new S-Bahn line: S15 soon[edit]

https://www.bz-berlin.de/ticker/neue-s-bahnlinie-fuer-berlin Nosferthetic (talk) 09:18, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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