One of the most unpleasant episodes during my #CrossBorderRail project – where I crossed every internal border of the EU you can cross by train – happened at Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany on 24th June, when arriving from Poland. Already four hours late due to a problem on the Polish […]
This blog has been rather quiet over the past few months as I have been running a project about cross border railways in the EU entitled #CrossBorderRail – and most of the daily reporting on that has been on Twitter. Now the research for the project – on the rails […]
In Daniel Pink’s classic lecture about motivation and drive for the RSA, he talks about autonomy and the desire to be self directed. In recent weeks I have been wondering about this when it comes to public transport timetables. What constraints on a person’s autonomy are going to be too […]
In early April I took a leap into the unknown, asking my blog readers and followers on Twitter to help me fund the #CrossBorderRail project. Within four days my fundraising appeal was a success, and I could start the project planning in earnest – sorting out the timetables, tickets and […]
A year ago I concluded I could no longer continue to dedicate my political energy on (post-)Brexit questions, and instead would focus on sustainable transport and railways. In the past year I have managed to be reasonably successful at that – my small campaign Trains for Europe has found its […]
Two interesting pieces of information about transport and the climate transition crossed my timeline yesterday. This tweet from TUMI: Transport: Save money, protect the climate 🚶♀️🚶♂️🚲🚃🚋🔌@IPCC_CH pic.twitter.com/M04fFglFmN — 𝗧𝗨Ⓜ️𝗜 for 🚶♂️🚶♀️🚴♀️🚴♂️🚋🚍🔋🔌 (@TUMInitiative) April 5, 2022 And this New York Times story entitled In Europe, It’s Planes vs. Trains. For Many […]
Background Deutsche Bahn used to sell tickets called London Spezial that offered incredible value train tickets from Germany to London, changing onto the Eurostar in Brussels. These tickets were discontinued in March 2020, officially due to a change of Eurostar’s IT systems, but more likely because they were sometimes so […]
Rail might correctly consider itself the greenest transport mode, but there is nevertheless plenty railways can do to decarbonise – not least by doing away with diesel as the primary fuel to power trains on non-electrified lines. The question then comes: how best to do that? Anyone who follows the discussion […]
Back in January a post on the TrainTracks.eu blog by Sebastian Wilken caught my eye – the post rated how easy it was to get to the three European Capitals of Culture this year (Esch 🇱🇺, Novi Sad 🇷🇸 and Kaunas 🇱🇹) by train. I can confirm the trip to […]
That the European Union needs to get more passengers and freight onto its railways is a no-brainer. Europe has a dense network of railways, with a lot of them in reasonable condition, a decent percentage electrified, and plenty of lines allowing trains to run at a good speed. With roads […]
This entire blog post has been superceded by a separate campaign website! Please consult that first! When, in a quiet moment late last year, I wondered what had come of the missing rail links Michael Cramer had proposed to fix when he was a MEP, I could not have […]
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 […]