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

Analysis

In this peculiar world of cross border railways, the new slow Bruxelles-Paris OUIGO train makes sense

Bruxelles-Paris by Eurostar (ex-Thalys) 300km/h high speed train takes just 1 hour 22 minutes, but as anyone who has taken it in recent years can testify, the prices can be horribly high, mostly because capacity is not adequate and no one has yet entered the market against the incumbent.

European Union

When will the new Subotica - Novi Sad rail line open? There's no dodging a decision now

In the summer of 2021, in between COVID lockdowns and needing all sorts of paperwork as a result, I made a trip from Berlin to Beograd, Serbia. I will only come to your event, I told the conference organisers, if I can make the trip by train and bus. I

Analysis

No Eurostar isn't the worst performing train company in Europe. But if you're T&E does it matter?

A message from a friend this morning: "Have you seen that piece in The Guardian saying Eurostar is the worst performing train service in Europe?" Oh what now, my heart sinking as I waited for her to send me the link. This is The Guardian's piece,

From Turmantas to Nova Gorica - #CrossBorderRail improvements due in 2025

All of the borders listed are places I have been, and are among my priority borders where problems need to be fixed. I cannot claim credit for having solved any of these, but I am quite sure me repeatedly talking about them - especially Turmantas! - has likely not been

Analysis

"We can't transport more passengers because our planes are already full" - said Michael O'Leary. Never. So why are rail companies saying essentially that?

It's a pretty obvious point if you think about it. If all of Ryanair's planes were all running full, all the time, what would Michael O'Leary (CEO of Ryanair) do? He'd order more planes. And yes, that'd mean more maintenance

Analysis

Only EU law is going to solve cross border rail ticketing problems

French state owned rail operator SNCF will not sell me tickets for Italian state owned rail operator Trenitalia's trains. Trenitalia will not sell me tickets for SNCF's trains. But in Brussels both Trenitalia and SNCF want to have you believe that a rail industry initiative called

Analysis

Tzitzikostas at his EP hearing 4th November: it's time to hear HOW he wants to fix EU-wide rail ticketing

When Ursula von der Leyen's released her political guidelines for her second term as President of the European Commission, there it was - a commitment to fix railway ticketing in the EU, including passenger rights: "Cross-border train travel is still too difficult for many citizens. People should

Austria

VDV on cross border re-activation of lines - nice idea, details more sketchy

The Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (VDV) (Association of German Transport Companies) has a detailed new website about reactivation of railway lines, and a PDF report with more detail. And one aspect of their proposals are cross-border reactivations that they have been publicising with the little infographic that I reproduce here. So

European Union

A partial #CrossBorderRail success - Deutsche Bahn Sparpreis cheap tickets now work to Strasbourg and to some other destination in Eastern France

Credit to one of my students at TU Braunschweig, Roland Sivonen, for discovering this one - Deutsche Bahn's cheap Sparpreis train tickets now work correctly from Germany to Strasbourg, and some other new destinations in France as well. In this blog post I am going to explain how

Germany

Berlin's problem with dumped cars

It is a pernicious combination. Parking on the street is free in most of Berlin, and the city's administration deficient - there is even a lack of clarity as to who is supposed to clear such wrecks. So that means Berlin is extremely slow to deal with cars

Analysis

International rail ticketing that is customer unfriendly - that is the system working as intended. We need EU law to change the system.

Justin Scholz, a thoughtful friend of mine, sent me a link to this post by Anil Dash, entitled "Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does" - do read it in full. Let's have a go applying this to international railway ticketing, and use

Analysis

The Stadler RS Zero: the new solution to save the smallest branch lines

Harrachov, Czechia Adorf (Vogtland), Germany Černousy, Czechia Selb-Plößberg, Germany Holzhau, Germany Bayerisch Eisenstein, Germany On the smallest branch lines in Germany and Czechia (and even just into Poland on one line) you will find them - Stadler RS1 railbuses, with their characteristic trapezoid shaped windows. Built between 1996 and 2013

European Union

"Summer 2025" for the new Régiolis trains France-Germany - Leroy and Hermann are just picking dates at random

So the new Régiolis trains are going to be running on France-Germany routes in "Summer 2025" according to Transport Minister, Baden-Württemberg Winfried Hermann and President of Région Grand Est, Franck Leroy. They may as well be picking dates at random. It is all because of delayed approval of

Analysis

Deutsche Bahn has an amazing opportunity in ticket sales, but is too blinded by Flixtrain to seize it

While clearing old belongings here (pre-move to France) I stumbled across a 2003 Interrail diary of mine, and in it were timetables for trains in Italy and Romania printed out from the website of Deutsche Bahn. Today, 21 years on, I am still using Deutsche Bahn's website to

France

How to not fall foul of SNCF's luggage rules

SNCF - for all TGV inOui and TER trains - introduced new luggage rules in February 2024, with a transition period up until mid September 2024 for their introduction, although it seems that even at the time of writing (August 2024) some SNCF staff are getting a bit over zealous

Croatia

Somewhere between hell and hype(r-loop) - where our railway discussion ought to be

Another day, and another stream of railway news pops up in my social media feed. On the hell side - unsurprisingly from Germany - comes news that the situation for passengers at München Hbf continues to worsen, while DB has closed the Hamburg-Berlin line for 4 months for works, something

Analysis

Peel back the rhetoric and state railways are naked on Europe-wide ticketing - only EU law is going to fix this mess

For the past few years the state owned railways in Europe - represented in Brussels by Community of European Railways (CER) - have been working on their "Ticketing Roadmap" (yes, don't laugh, railway companies really have a roadmap). This roadmap is the railways' response to

Analysis

So long Berlin. I'm off to a Bourgogne village

On 27th September, a removal truck will pull up outside the building in Berlin Neukölln I currently call home, and into it will go my belongings. My time in Berlin will be over. I'll race ahead of the truck in a train, and from that evening Ravières (population:

European Union

30 trains costing €376 million for France-Germany services - parked up without any prospect of operations until 2027

Regional rail services between France and Germany are poor, but change is supposed to be around the corner. A fleet of new Régiolis trains for the these services has been ordered and built (and I set out to find them) but when the operations of these trains will start, and

Analysis

Note to the new EU Transport Commissioner: fixing cross border rail ticketing will help millions of Europeans, and can secure your legacy

Dear 2024 nominee for European Commissioner for Transport, Congratulations on your nomination. Being Transport Commissioner is a massive challenge, and an enormous privilege. As pretty much all of us living in the EU use some sort of transport every day, what you do is going to have an impact on

Bulgaria

North Macedonia's phantom rail line, and why I am worried they're repeating the error at the other end of the country

The railway line from Thessaloniki (Greece) to Bitola (North Macedonia) via Florina has a long history. It was completed in 1894, before the Balkan Wars in 1913 resulted in the final 17km ending up in Yugoslavia. Trains continued to run on the cross border section until 1987, and then ceased,

Estonia

Rail Baltica: better informed but none the wiser

There is was. The sign in the middle of nowhere: Kaisma. The village of 119 inhabitants that is to get a Rail Baltica station. The village - if you can call it that - was a little further on. A cluster of houses and a bus stop. And then even

Analysis

Schlimmer geht immer - rumours about the transport portfolio in the next European Commission

Edit: it looks like this danger has been averted. Phew! See Manual Müller's updated list of Commission nominees here. "Schlimmer geht immer" the Germans say. "It can always get worse" As regular readers of this blog know, I am not the biggest fan of

Analysis

SNCF is stopping sales of most international tickets - a decision rooted in incompetence, and communicated with malevolence

If you want to travel on 22nd May 2024 from Paris to Berlin (Germany), Verviers (Belgium) or Luzern (Switzerland), the app and website for SNCF ticketing, SNCF Connect, will show you prices and sell you a ticket. Try the same on 24th May 2024 and it will not. Here are

France

Another #CrossBorderRail success - timetables for Irun-Hendaia Euskotren are finally in international timetable searches

A key message in all of my #CrossBorderRail work has been that some problems ought to be really easy to solve. The really, really, really easy ones ought to be the places where trains run, and even run with decent timetables, but there are data sharing problems - meaning the