Is taking a train something you do every day, rivaling a car? Something flexible, you just get on and go? Or is it something you do less regularly? Something where you plan, that you know long ahead where and when you will travel? More similar to how most people take […]
Since embarking on my first #CrossBorderRail tour in the summer of 2022 and follow up smaller tours in 2023, internal railway borders of the European Union have been my prime focus – and so far I have been to exactly 200 borders (you can see them all mapped here – […]
On 3rd March the documentary “Europa spoort niet” aired on NPO2, the Dutch public state broadcaster’s TV channel. It is in the documentary series Tegenlicht, produced by vpro. You can watch the whole thing (50 mins) with Dutch subtitles here, and there is a version for Youtube edited to be […]
At one level the answer to the question posed in the title of this post is obvious: very green. This 2020 report (PDF) by the European Environment Agency puts some numbers on it, summarised in this graph: I might quibble with some of the numbers here, but the overall picture […]
“What ticketing platform can you recommend for cross-border railway bookings, Jon?” is a question I receive quite often. And the answer, rather disappointingly, is “It depends where you’re going.” Or – put that another way – I can give none of the third party privately owned booking platforms a universal […]
“Görlitz bekommt die erste Wasserstoff-Straßenbahn Europas” – “Görlitz will get the first hydrogen tram in Europe” the article claims. It might as well be entitled “Görlitz has decided to go for the most stupid public transport idea imaginable” It’s not only that a hydrogen tram is stupid, it’s that doing […]