This would be such an improvement. Getting train tickets can be a real pain in the ass in some countries.
I did interrail in Spain this summer. In order to take most trains i needed seat reservations, which is only €4 or so. But I needed to book these reservations in advance, which can only be done in Spanish train stations. So there’s just no way to plan ahead before getting to Spain.
And then you arrive in Barcelona, and there’s a 1.5 hours wait at the station just to make a reservation that takes around 40 seconds. At this point the trains you wanted to take are of course full, and you have to make huge detours.
In Madrid the situation was the same - I had to spend almost two hours in a train station a day I wasn’t even travelling.
I imagine it’s not an easy system to fix. But god knows I’ll be happy if they manage to.
Huh? In my experience things are significantly more modern here. Sure, the rail connection to Spain sucks, but otherwise the trains work quite well.
I imagine it’s not an easy system to fix. But god knows I’ll be happy if they manage to.
I feel like this is exactly the kind of issue that can only be fixed by the EU putting their foot down and commanding all rail operators to connect to the same system. Ideally even based on open standards so that other parties can make the tickets available as well.
Sure, it wouldn’t be done in a day, but at least there would be movement. I don’t even need the single ticket, just at least give me a single place to buy them all in a single transaction.
Carlos Ambel, a senior director at T&E, wrote in a blog post in September 2023 that “(then) Transport Commissioner Valean delayed the publication, making it impossible to be adopted before the end of the parliamentary term”.
“She tried to push for a less ambitious proposal which would not allow independent booking platforms to sell the tickets of rail incumbents but just show the connection,” he argued.
According to Ambel, this was due to lobbying by rail operators, who “fear that they will lose revenues from the distribution of tickets and that it will put new rail entrants in the spotlight”.
Fucking rail operators who did nothing for decades are panicking over this proposal. Why does that not surprise me.
Alberto Mazzola, CER’s executive director, said that while the rail industry supports measures to improve international ticketing, this “shouldn’t be at the expense of the transport operators”.
“Railway undertakings operate on small margins with high fixed costs, so any regulatory intervention that decreases those margins will potentially result in diminishing services, with a negative impact on passengers,” he said at the time.
I am 100% confident that improvements to international ticketing would increase ridership, so even if they’d get a smaller slice of the pie, the pie would still be bigger. But that’s probably too much long-term thinking / less certain than the status quo, so I’m sure they’re lobbying against it :/