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 […]
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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. […]
Should Deutsche Bahn be obliged to sell tickets of private rivals in DB Navigator?
It was in the news this week that night train startup European Sleeper has contacted the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) in Germany over Deutsche Bahn’s refusal to sell its tickets on bahn.de and in its DB Navigator app. I can see European Sleeper’s point of view very clearly here – […]
If you reduced track access charges in European passenger rail, very little would happen – at least short term
Transport & Environment, Allrail, Trainline and some private railway companies and ticket sellers have released a letter (PDF here) to the European Commission calling for a reduction in track access charges for passenger trains. They specifically mention “trains with high capacity” (whatever that means exactly – run fewer, larger trains?), […]