A silly idea to prove a point? The European Railway Ticketing Championship

With Regulations to finally sort the problems with purchasing tickets for trains, Europe-wide, due to be presented by the European Commission this spring, there remains a crucial problem: do the people who are drafting this legislation (in the Commission), deciding on it (in the Council of the EU and the European Parliament), and lobbying on this topic (CER, ALLRAIL etc.) actually really, viscerally, understand the problem?

My #CrossBorderRail project has led to me being in those situations far too often, where it is not obvious how to even get from A to B by train, and if you even can, how do you possibly get a ticket for the train?

So why not set up a silly competition to prove the point? The European Railway Ticketing Championship.

Teams would face off against each other, each at a computer streaming their efforts online, and within a fixed time would have to answer a ticketing problem. I could be the person setting the tasks. It would be things like:

"You are a 24 year old student who has a Deutschlandticket. You need to make a return trip from Tübingen (Germany) to Châlons-en-Champagne (France), going to Châlons on Saturday 11 April and returning on Sunday 12 April. Find the cheapest ticket for this journey."

Or "You are a couple with heavy luggage, find a route from Mühldorf (Germany) to Brno (Czechia) that involves the fewest changes possible, and minimises the walking distance for the passengers. The trip can happen any day in the first week of June. Make sure they have passenger rights for the case that something goes wrong."

There are of course all sorts of different aspects that could be covered - price, speed, passenger rights, reliability, accessibility, family friendliness, ability to transport bikes. These would all have to be adequately covered somewhere in the tasks set in the Championship.

In each round once their answers were submitted each team would explain their solutions, and be scored on their answers. And the winner would then proceed to the next round.

The teams in the Championship would be a mixture of legislative players (Commission, maybe some MEPs), lobbyists (CER, ALLRAIL, EU Travel Tech) and regular travellers (who might have more tricks up their sleeves). Ideally there would be 16 teams, so 4 rounds in total.

I don't know if I can actually do this yet, and I most definitely have no budget. But if you like (or hate!) the idea, let me know in the comments. If you would like to help me run it, or be a participant in it, or have ideas how to make it work, then please contact me!