> I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others

Sure. But "with a nearly perfect on-time performance of 99.3% on Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines," there isn't much room to hide problems. (LIRR is 96.3%.)

The point is we have systems that have been well built and well maintained. They just don't get coverage because they just work. (The LIRR is far from perfect, mind you. But it's apparently outperforming the DB. You have to get to some of the worst routes during peak conditions to get in the neighbourhood of DB's systemic numbers.)

That is a lot better than the 62% on-time statistic for Deutsche Bahn inter-city travel.

I deal with late trains around two-thirds of my trips. Sometimes up to two hours of delay.

Isn't the LIRR more of a commuter rail than intercity?

If true it would beat the 92.5% statistic for Swiss trains that was mentioned in the article.

As JumpCrisscross asked the definition of on-time is important. Most Euro countries define "on time" as "within 5 minutes" with something like 90%+ of their train being on time.

SBB CFF FFS has similar numbers, except it defines "on time" as "within 3 minutes"[1] which is of course harder to achieve.

[1] https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society...