You have to give credit to the people that have kept the campaign for the re-activation of the Freiburg – Breisach – Volgelsheim – Colmar railway line alive. For a decade they’ve been campaigning, and the next step is a day of action on 14th April – where they aim […]
France
3 of the #CrossBorderRail Top 20 projects now solved
The motivation for the whole #CrossBorderRail project was to assess why there had been such meagre progress fixing the 15 missing links Michael Cramer had proposed in his 2015 report. Only 1 of the 15 from Cramer’s list – Selb-Plößberg (Germany) to Aš (Czechia) – has so far been fixed. […]
Interrail tips and tricks
In the course of my #CrossBorderRail project I have learned a fair bit about how to use Interrail passes in a bunch of different countries. While this is far from a complete guide, here are a bunch of tips and tricks I have picked up. All are correct as of […]
Deutschlandfunk and Süddeutsche Zeitung about railway ticketing, and a niche slow train in Croatia
Warum Bahnfahren in Europa oft so kompliziert ist Mal eben schnell mit ein paar Klicks buchen, das funktioniert nicht. Aber ein paar Tricks gibt es doch, um schneller oder zumindest maximal günstig an eine Fahrkarte zu kommen. “Man sollte die Planung von der Buchung trennen”, sagt Jon Worth. Süddeutsche Zeitung […]
The future of long distance train services through the Channel Tunnel
This blog post has remained unchanged since it was written in 2024. It has largely been superceeded by my #CrossChannelRail Project Final Report TL;DR – whatever you read in the press about future long distance train services through the Channel Tunnel is at best only part of the truth, because […]
Stuck between an undeveloped market and the hangovers of state monopolies, rail passengers face the worst of both worlds
It’s one of the most common questions I field from journalists: “would more private companies help with the state of the railways in Europe?” And rather than a yes or no, my answer is instead “I’m not sure“. That puts me in a strange position – I take no position […]