France Archives - Jon Worth

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[Read More…]

13.03.2023 4 comments

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 Ärger, den ich häufig in[Read More…]

09.03.2023 0 comments

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 many cases[Read More…]

06.03.2023 1 comment

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 Granlund this[Read More…]

18.02.2023 0 comments

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. “Have you ever[Read More…]

27.01.2023 15 comments

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, as[Read More…]

07.12.2022 0 comments

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[Read More…]

11.11.2022 1 comment

The postcard marathon

It was a nice idea. Get myself out of the digital-only communication means on my blog and on Twitter, and go back to old and friendly forms of travel writing – postcards! But not any old postcards… Self-printed postcards, 2 for each day of the #CrossBorderRail project, home made and[Read More…]

15.08.2022 0 comments

Press coverage of the #CrossBorderRail project – South West loop

Železnice imajo težave pri prečkanju meja Dnevnik – Peter Pahor – 18.7.2022 “Jon Worth bo z vlakom in svojim zložljivim kolesom prepotoval 27.000 kilometrov dolgo pot in pri tem prečkal vse notranje meje Evropske unije. Na terenu že več kot mesec dni spoznava, kako se lahko stvari zapletejo, ko želiš[Read More…]

18.07.2022 1 comment

Skyscanner for rail? Before we can even build such a thing we need a European rail timetable

In as far as there is a debate about the problems of cross border railways in Europe, one question crops up over and over: “why is there no Skyscanner for rail?” If one website can aggregate all the flights in Europe and allow a customer to compare prices and book[Read More…]

14.01.2022 4 comments