A diagram to explain EU cross border rail passengers rights – and to push for political change

I managed to make a bit of a name for myself throughout the Brexit process by turning the complexities of the it into complex flow diagrams. I’ve used similar techniques to explain party leadership processes in UK and Germany, how to choose a Bundesliga team to support, and even a couple about railways – on why there will likely be no night train through the Channel Tunnel, and what the alternatives are to diesel to decarbonise railways.

But now it’s time to release perhaps my most ambitious (hopeless?) diagram yet: to try to explain international railway passenger rights in Europe.

Simply put, if an international railway journey in Europe involves more than one train, and you end up with more than one ticket for your trip, what happens in the case of disruption (delay, cancellation, missed connections) is almighty complex.

So this diagram has two purposes.

If you are an international rail passenger it can help you work out what to do if your trip is disrupted.

And because all of this is such a mess, it is a sort of case for better and simpler rules – European Commission Vice President has pronounced he is “sick of it” about the current railway ticketing mess in Europe. So perhaps this illustration might tempt the Commission to do a little more in this area?

Constantin Lehnert gave me the idea for the diagram and gave me a lot of help with the first diagram, and half a dozen other people have helped me get the diagram into this state (thanks to all of you!), but no doubt it will need further refinement. If you have spotted an error, or have some idea to contribute, then leave a comment or contact me. The diagram is for information purposes only – this is not legal advice!

High resolution PDF and PNG files of the diagrams, and draw.io XML, will always be uploaded to this folder.

Version 1.2.0 – 25 January 2023 View as PDF here, or click the image below to enlarge (PNG). Version 1.1.0 was missing some clarifications about how Railteam is supposed to work. Those have been added in this version.

Version 1.1.0 – 24 January 2023 View as PDF here, or click the image below to enlarge (PNG). Some minor amendments to clarify some of the branches – mostly additional blue boxes.

Version 1.0.0 – 16 January 2023 View as PDF here, or click the image below to enlarge (PNG)