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

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

Quick takes

A new departure: transport commentary has its own site

For a long time all my analysis of railway policy was bundled in with the rest of the things I have written over the years about other topics - Brexit, EU politics, UK politics and technology. But as I want to work more on railway issues, and develop campaigns and

European Union

ChatGPT vs. Adina Vălean - the machine does a solid job

One of my repeated frustrations when working on railway policy in the European Union is how imprecise and woolly the communication from policy makers in the area is. This is in particular the case when European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vălean talks about railways. So as ChatGPT is now available

Analysis

Fixing France's railways - what would I do?

This morning I gave a presentation about solving the problems of Europe's railways at an event organised by BEUC and hosted by UFC Que Choisir in Paris. Plenty of the debate centred on the problems of rail in France (and Spain) I documented during my #CrossBorderRail project. "

European Union

A diagram to explain EU cross border rail passengers rights - and to push for political change

I managed to make a bit of a name for myself throughout the Brexit process by turning the complexities of the it into complex flow diagrams. I've used similar techniques to explain party leadership processes in UK and Germany, how to choose a Bundesliga team to support, and

Analysis

If COVID is now endemic, it's time to discuss permanent changes to the way we behave - like wear-a-mask zones on long distance trains

Christian Drosten has today stated that the COVID pandemic is over, and the virus is now endemic. That has led, rather predictably, to the demand that all Corona protection measures be lifted in Germany - FDP Justice Minister Buschmann was the swiftest to make this demand today. But that COVID

Analysis

The 49 Euro Ticket / Deutschlandticket - the ticket that no one really wants?

Back in the summer of 2022 it was party time - almost literally - for passengers on German public transport. For the months of June, July and August it cost just 9 Euro a month, flat rate, to use regional and local public transport anywhere in Germany (basically pretty much

Analysis

Deutschlandticket - 49 Euro Ticket - FAQ

Meine Mastodon Feeds sind voll mit Fragen, wie das neue 49 Euro Ticket (auch als Deutschlandticket bekannt) für den öffentlichen Nahverkehr in Deutschland funktioniert. Deshalb werde ich in diesem Beitrag versuchen, alle häufig gestellten Fragen zum Ticket zu beantworten. Alle Angaben entsprechen dem Stand vom 26. Dezember 2022 - sobald

European Union

Mapping all of Europe's #CrossBorderRail lines

In the summer of 2022 I crossed all of the internal borders of the European Union (and Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein) you can cross by train. That ended up with 95 borders crossed (you can find all the routes I took here). But that is long way away from crossing

Analysis

European railways and the implementation gap

I was recording an episode of the Human Risk podcast with Christian Hunt this week - basically about humans and railways - and the conversation came back to what I think I ought to call the implementation gap in railway policy. "When I moved to München", Christian was

Czechia

Autumn press coverage of the #CrossBorderRail project

Guest on #RailNatter with Gareth Dennis - 4 Jan 2023 Han har krydset alle EU’s grænser i tog i 2022. Nu er han mest af alt bare sur Information - 3 Jan 2023 - Mathias Sonne Aktivisten Jon Worth har i 2022 kørt Europa tyndt og krydset alle europæiske

Belgium

You are invited to the funeral for the Mons 🇧🇪 - Aulnoye-Aymeries 🇫🇷 train

One of the strangest experiences in my #CrossBorderRail trip this summer was as the only passenger on the Mons to Aulnoye-Aymeries train - it even features in my summary video. Given that the one I took departs Mons at 06:04 then I suppose that was no surprise. And then,

Analysis

Why Interrail is structurally incapable of fixing the seat reservation problems with its passes

During my #CrossBorderRail project in the summer of 2022 I needed to take regional trains Badajoz-Merida and Merida-Madrid in Spain, and these trains require compulsory seat reservations. Buying a combined ticket and reservation online for these trains is no problem, but Interrail pass holders need just a seat reservation. At

Analysis

Why are Europe's railways a mess? Our public diagnosis of the problem falls short

Another day, another earnest column in a broadsheet newspaper listing the problems with Europe's railways - this time it's Die Zeit. We should fly less, we need more high speed trains, we need more night trains, plans for more have come to nothing, why is infra

Analysis

Bruxelles - Köln, and decision makers' disconnection from reality

There is no international railway line I have travelled more often than Bruxelles - Köln. A good part of my life since my teenage years on language exchanges in the mid-1990s in Verviers and Lahnstein, through to professional life today in my early forties as a self employed person living

Belgium

Mons-Aulnoye - Belgium and France close a cross border passenger railway line

It was one of the most surreal experiences of the #CrossBorderRail project: to be the only passenger on an international train for its entire trip. It even made it into my summary video. It happened on Day 1, at the Belgium-France border, between Mons and Aulnoye-Aymeries - and you can