Jon Worth

European, originally a Brit, became German, moved to France. Runs #CrossBorderRail project, writes a newsletter about railways. Green, lives happily without a car Normally stuck on a train, stuck in a village, or escaping either on a folding bicycle

European Union

Strasbourg? Karlsruhe? No - Saarbrücken? Where the future Paris-Berlin ICE stops is not the issue

There are two high-ish speed routes between Paris Est and Frankfurt(Main)Hbf by train - the shorter one in terms of route-km but with less high speed infrastructure via Saarbrücken (mapped here), and the 70km longer one but with more high speed lines via Strasbourg and Karlsruhe (mapped here)

Analysis

The personal is political. Have you ever been to Seifhennersdorf, Zgorzelec or Ormenio?

A Friday evening in early June. I am in a compartment in a delayed EuroCity train from München to Klagenfurt, and I am helping one of my fellow passengers in the compartment with their onward connections due to the delay, and conversation turns to broader railway issues, and I explain

Czechia

Good news! The Seifhennersdorf (DE) - Varnsdorf (CZ) line to re-open

One grey and overcast August day last year I took a New York Times journalist and photographer to Seifhennersdorf, a town in Sachsen, Germany, that is less than 2 kilometres from the border to Czechia. The town features in the resulting piece in the Times about my #CrossBorderRail project. The

Analysis

Explaining complexity in my usual way - with a diagram! This time: Deutschlandticket

1st May heralds a major change in public transport in Germany: the introduction of the Deutschlandticket. I've explained where to buy it before - but that's quite simple. What about where it's valid? That's more complex. And the way I explain complexity?

Analysis

DeutschlandTicket as a tourist? Buy it from mo.pla

From 1st May 2023 there is a new, flat-rate ticket for public transport in Germany: the DeutschlandTicket. €49 per month, for unlimited use of regional public transport in the whole of the country. That means buses, trams, metros, S-Bahn and regional trains. Or the other way around, it means everything

Analysis

New trains for France-Germany regional services to be delayed 2 years - now 2026 not 2024

Ordered in 2019, and presented with great fanfare by Malu Dreyer in 2021, the new Régiolis diesel-electric hybrid trains were due to enter service on France-Germany regional routes in December 2024. And now - it quietly slipped out - that date has been pushed to December 2026, according to the

Analysis

Events planned, routes adjusted, and crowdfunding ongoing - #CrossBorderRail is 2 weeks away!

On 2nd May - just two weeks from now - I set off on my latest #CrossBorderRail adventure. This time I am going back to all of Germany's rail borders that I did not visit in 2022. You can find the background about the 2023 project here. This

Quick takes

Toute l'Europe - a future night train map that's very, very bad

This cropped up in my LinkedIn feed earlier today. At the time I commented on it, simply saying it was bullshit. Now I am going to take it apart, and break down why it is bullshit. The map comes from this article from Toute l'Europe. We've

Germany

The Deutschlandticket - when is a regional train not a regional train?

The reason I am doing my #CrossBorderRail all the Germany borders project in May 2023 is to test the new Deutschlandticket, the 49 Euro flat rate public transport ticket that will start that month. It is the permanent successor to the temporary 9 Euro Ticket available for three months in

Routes

Mapping my #CrossBorderRail projects

I take a lot of pride in making sure my #CrossBorderRail projects are well mapped. But how do you even map rail routes? It's not as if it's something someone does every day! So here I am going to outline how I do everything. It might

Analysis

Crowd-funding for #CrossBorderRail 2023 - all of Germany's borders - is now open!

In the summer of 2022 with the #CrossBorderRail project I crossed all of the EU's internal borders that you can cross by train. This video sums up what I discovered: Rather than one huge project, this year I am going to be doing a series of smaller projects

Belgium

Quoted in the FT "‘We are full’: the rebirth of Europe’s sleeper trains"

Before we can really scale up night trains in Europe, someone (other than ÖBB!) has to order some new trains. This is the argument I have been making for some time on my Trains for Europe site. So it was good to have the FT examine the subject. The piece

Analysis

Will there be a direct train from [insert city] to London through the Channel Tunnel? Probably not

Basel, Switzerland. The latest city for which a direct train to London has been proposed. It is unlikely to get it, as are Geneva, Köln (CDU-Green NRW coalition agreement Page 132), Frankfurt and Bordeaux. And Marseille and Lyon are unlikely to get their direct trains to London back. There are

France

Meeting Michael Peterson with Die Zeit, and quoted by CNN about shift from planes to trains

I was one of three regular railway passengers asked by German weekly paper Die Zeit to meet head of DB Fernverkehr Michael Peterson to discuss Deutsche Bahn's current woes. The interview appeared in the printed paper on 9 March 2023, and is online here (paywalled). "Worth: Den

Analysis

Make international rail cheaper? Capacity on a route is the crucial issue

It's a common refrain: more people would take the train - especially on international routes - if only it were cheaper! That line of argument assumes that there are actually more trains to take. In other words that there is spare capacity. The problem is that - in

Austria

TimeOut makes a right hash of the new Milano-München trains story

Christian Hunt (I was a guest on his podcast) just sent me this article from TimeOut about proposed Milano-München trains, and asked me if I could do some quick analysis of it. I have already written one piece about this proposed route here, but TimeOut makes such a complete mess

Austria

Quoted in Berliner Zeitung about the Brenner pilot project

I spoke to Peter Neumann of Berliner Zeitung about the plans for new, faster trains on Italy-Germany routes over the Brenner Pass - explained more in English here. This is a quote in German: "Das sind dicke Bretter. Doch Trenitalia, die ÖBB und die DB pflegen eine „gute Kooperation“

Italy

Viral rubbish about railways, this time about trains in Italy

This popped up in my Facebook feed just now: It links here. The graphic has 2.5k reactions, 375 comments, and 468 shares. The problem? Yeah, it's pretty much ALL wrong. Mi O My Italy who posted it posted the right km/h to mph conversion in their

Analysis

Faster trains between München and Milano, and München and Roma? Possible, but not quite in the way Merkur frames it

Over on Mastodon, Gregor Herrmann pointed me towards this story in German publication Merkur about German, Austrian and Italian railways planning faster rail connections between München and Milano, and München and Roma. ORF and Die Presse covered the story in Austria, but here I am going to focus on the

Analysis

Stadler's new day-night trains for Norway - I have some questions

A few days ago it was announced that Stadler has won the contract to supply new long distance trains to Norway. The official press release from Norske Tog in Norwegian is here, and there are articles from IRJ and Global Railway Review in English as well. While this tender only

Belgium

European Sleeper Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin - you better know it exists!

In rail nerd circles we've had our eye on the launch of the European Sleeper service for some time - the new privately operated night train that will run Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin, and eventually will be extended to Prague. As was announced recently in the company's newsletter, tickets

Denmark

When DPA gets it wrong about railways, the whole of the German media gets it wrong

Süddeutsche Zeitung. Hamburger Morgenpost. Bild. Stern. T-Online. NDR. RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. Zeit. FAZ. They all wrote yesterday about the "new" night train Hamburg-Stockholm that - according to all the stories - had its premiere yesterday. The problem? The train has been running since 1st September 2022. Nothing new happened

France

Taking apart Euronews's puff piece about the new TGVs

One of the aims of this new "Quick takes" category here is for me to write things something longer than a toot or tweet, but not as well thought out as longer-form blog posts. So here goes. This toot - boosted into my Mastodon home feed by Aarne

Denmark

Quoted in Politiken about the European Commission's international rail pilot projects

When the European Commission released details of its pilot services to boost cross-border rail, it caused quite a splash - it was even front page news in Metro in Belgium: The problem was that much of the coverage was mis-guided, at least in part thanks to the European Commission over-selling

Germany

Bike parking at Berlin Hbf

Today I made a rather unusual trip to Berlin Hbf - I was not actually departing on a train anywhere! Instead the purpose of my trip was to a meeting for some media work - I will post more about that in due course. But the trip gave me the