Edit: it looks like this danger has been averted. Phew! See Manual Müller’s updated list of Commission nominees here. “Schlimmer geht immer” the Germans say. “It can always get worse” As regular readers of this blog know, I am not the biggest fan of current European Commissioner for Transport, Adina-Ioana […]
Latest Posts
SNCF is stopping sales of most international tickets – a decision rooted in incompetence, and communicated with malevolence
If you want to travel on 22nd May 2024 from Paris to Berlin (Germany), Verviers (Belgium) or Luzern (Switzerland), the app and website for SNCF ticketing, SNCF Connect, will show you prices and sell you a ticket. Try the same on 24th May 2024 and it will not. Here are […]
Railways and the Enrico Letta report on the future of the Single Market
Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta has been spending months preparing a report on the future of the EU’s Single Market. The report will be presented to Heads of State and Government this week, and was published yesterday – you can find the PDF here. A couple of well connected […]
A report for Jakop Dalunde MEP and a follow up event about rail and multimodal ticketing in the EU
I was commissioned by Jakop Dalunde, MEP from Miljöpartiet de gröna (Greens/EFA), to write a report about the ongoing challenges to fix multimodal and especially railway ticketing problems EU-wide. The report – entitled “Simplifying European Ticketing – A chance for a green transformation of public and multimodal transport in the […]
Abandoned luggage on trains, and the presumption of innocence
Once – in all my years travelling by rail – I left a bag on a train by mistake. It was sometime between 2005 and 2007 when I was working in both London and Sunningdale (50 mins west of London), and unusually I had a bag with a suit in […]
No amount of investment in infrastructure can save rail companies from themselves
Wolfgang Cramer is a long time connection of mine on social media. He is obsessed about reducing his carbon footprint, and travels pretty much everywhere by train and bike, so you can see why I get along with him. He has thousands of kilometres of rail travel, Europe-wide, behind him. […]