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Jon Worth

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Jon Worth

EU politics and sustainable transport, especially railways Brit who became German & lives in a village in France. When he's not escaping it on a train or a folding bicycle Teaches at College of Europe, still writes a blog, photographs with a drone

Turning a 2001 Riese und Müller Birdy into a modern folding bicycle

Turning a 2001 Riese und Müller Birdy into a modern folding bicycle

This post was written in January 2020, a smaller update was added in November 2021, and a large update was added in March 2022, with further small changes in April 2022 and January 2023. The original January 2020 blog post remains more or less as written! In the meantime if

How to book Brussels-Amsterdam rail tickets - a further example of the absurdity of cross border rail in the EU

"Jon, did you know?" a friend asked me today. "There's now Eurostar Brussels to Amsterdam and it's cheaper than the Thalys!" As a rail nerd I did of course know it exists but I have not had the chance to take it

How a little openness and transparency would change EU-wide rail

On Wednesday 15 January 2020, just under 2 months from now, I want to make a rail trip from Bruges in Belgium to Aix-en-Provence in France. What do I need to plan such a trip? The times of the trains, and an ability to book tickets. Shouldn't be

The definitive guide to Berlin multi-mode mobility apps

For most of my adult life I have lived in big cities, and that means never having the need to own a car (even though I have a driving license). My own bicycle is my normal way around Berlin where I currently live, with public transport (U-Bahn and S-Bahn mostly)

A day trip to the last outpost of the Soviet Union - Tiraspol in Transnistria

A day trip to the last outpost of the Soviet Union - Tiraspol in Transnistria

So you want to go to the only place in the world that still has the hammer and sickle on its flag? A largely unrecognised state? One with a statue of Lenin in front of its Parliament? And you want to do that in 2019? And you want to do

A rail postcard from Passow (Uckermark)

Dear Violeta, It has been a little while since I last wrote you a postcard from one of my cross-border rail trips. But this week I took a little journey from Berlin to Szczecin / Stettin in West Pomerania in Poland, represented in the European Parliament by Bogusław Liberadzki - who

SNCF. Is this public service?

My trip today, 10 April 2018: Toulouse (population: 467000, 1.3 million in the urban area) to Béziers (population: 75000). Distance 176km by train, 180km by road. Departure time: sometime around 1500. Towns along the route: Castelnaudary (population: 11000), Carcassonne (48000), Narbonne (53000). Beyond Béziers are Montpellier, Nîmes and Marseille.

The enduring mess of cross-border rail booking - Geneva to Berlin

On Tuesday 28th November - more than 2 months from now - I want to make a train trip from Geneva to Berlin. The connection is easy enough - two InterCity trains in Switzerland, via Biel/Bienne, to Basel SBB, and then the NightJet night train from there to Berlin.

Which Berlin eScooter sharing scheme should you join? Testing Coup and Emmy

tl;dr - join both Coup and Emmy If instead you want some detail, read on. Contents * Introduction * Prerequisites * Signup * Pricing * Scooters * Helmets * Test rides * Miscellaneous other remarks * Summary Introduction Berlin - long the testing groud for car sharing schemes - has a new mobility craze. The eScooter sharing scheme.

Locomore lives again - with Czech partners and support from Flixbus

I started writing this blog enty sat aboard the first Locomore / Leo Express / Flixtrain / Flixbus service, departing at 1419 on 24th August from Berlin Lichtenberg to Stuttgart. I was only going as far as Berlin Hauptbahnhof, but that's enough time to test the onboard wifi. Solid so far

The cheapest Deutsche Bahn Sparpreis across central Germany... starts in Czech Republic

I've discovered a few tricks to book extra cheap rail tickets in the past - I've explained the Eurostar Aachen trick, and how to split tickets in Germany, but now - thanks to a discussion on Twitter with @seatsixtyone and others, there is a new trick

The prerequisites to make a liberalised EU rail market work

After having been stuck again this morning due to lack of collaboration between EU rail firms, I started to wonder: can liberalisation of EU rail actually ever work? And, were it to ever work, what are the prerequisites to making it work? The blog entry tries to at least pose

A rail postcard from Brussels

(this is part of my Rail Postcards to the Transport Commissioner series - you can find all the other postcards here) Dear Violeta, I'd hoped to not have to write another one of these postcards to you so soon after my last one. But things go wrong all

A rail postcard from Aachen

Dear Violeta, Today I am writing to you from Aachen, and I am not here for the Christmas Market. I am here because I am stuck due to the immense incompetence of European railways and the lack of basic collaboration between them in the interests of passengers. This story is

How do you book an Austrian train (ÖBB Nightjet) from Germany to Switzerland?

How do you book an Austrian train (ÖBB Nightjet) from Germany to Switzerland?

The bad news from the timetable change in December was that Deutsche Bahn stopped all its night trains. The good news was that Austrian Railways (ÖBB) has taken over some of the routes under the new brand name NightJet. If you want some background on this change I was quoted

Why Belgium's plan for PNR for rail and buses/coaches must be stopped

Put yourselves in the shoes of a terrorist for a moment. You need to transport your home made bomb from Frankfurt (Main) in Germany to Brussels in Belgium. You know the plane is no good for this - they'll check your bag. Loads of documentation is needed to

Taking the train is a strain - Newport to Berlin case

My parents live in Newport in South Wales. I live in Berlin. I am going home for Christmas, and so - on 27th December - I want to return to Berlin. All in one day. By train. If I wanted to do this in a few weeks' time, it

Three weeks in Central Asia - a review

I've just returned from a three week trip to Central Asia. This blog entry is part review of what I saw and did, and hence partly a suggestion about what to do, and how to do it. Hence the blog entry is rather long. My rationale for going

Walk 500m to avoid STIB's security checks - that's not security, that's a joke

I'm in Brussels today (Thursday 24.3.2016), two days after the Brussels attacks at Zaventem and Maelbeek. STIB, the Brussels public transport network (operator of buses, trams and metro) is operating a limited service today for security reasons. A screenshot explaining the situation is here. Brussels however

Thalys IZY: market segmentation is not the same as competition

So Thalys - whose rail service always strikes me as the worst combination of anglo-saxon economics and Belgian service - has a new wheeze. A new, lower cost, but slower train between Paris and Brussels, branded IZY (Easy - geddit?) It's like Thalys's version of OUIGO,

Is a Rimowa suitcase worth the money?

€529 for a suitcase? A suitcase? Yes. I paid that, back in June 2013, for a Rimowa Topas Cabin Trolley IATA 55cm (model details here). It is one of the very best purchases I have ever made, and now, with hindsight, I do not regret it for a moment. First,

A rail postcard from Baden Baden

Dear Violeta, Have you ever changed trains in Baden Baden (in Baden-Württemberg between Freiburg (Breisgau) and Karlsruhe)? I guess not. It's a pretty unlikely place to have to hop off a TGV and onto a ICE, but that's what I had to do there today -

Why securing Europe's railways against terrorism shouldn't be attempted

So apparently this morning Ségolène Royal, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, has announced that security gates will be built to access Thalys trains: https://twitter.com/jul_mm/status/669058150729957377 De Telegraaf interprets this as meaning bag scanners, going further than La Voix du Nord does (although their

We now have no idea what's happening with Brussels-Strasbourg TGVs

This blog entry was published on 2nd November, and remains intact below. However, two things have happened since then. First, the Eckwersheim Derailment has led to the suspension of all TGV tests, and will mean the part of the LGV Est that the Brussels-Strasbourg service will use will not open

More transparency needed - an EU citizen can't currently know when and where Schengen is suspended

On Thursday 29th October I am taking the train from Berlin to Vienna, via Nürnberg. This means I will cross the German - Austrian border at Passau. But what is the status of that border at the moment? Is Schengen suspended there, or not? This is a valid question to