Analysis

A collection of 288 posts

Analysis

Deutsche Bahn has an amazing opportunity in ticket sales, but is too blinded by Flixtrain to seize it

While clearing old belongings here (pre-move to France) I stumbled across a 2003 Interrail diary of mine, and in it were timetables for trains in Italy and Romania printed out from the website of Deutsche Bahn. Today, 21 years on, I am still using Deutsche Bahn's website to

Analysis

Peel back the rhetoric and state railways are naked on Europe-wide ticketing - only EU law is going to fix this mess

For the past few years the state owned railways in Europe - represented in Brussels by Community of European Railways (CER) - have been working on their "Ticketing Roadmap" (yes, don't laugh, railway companies really have a roadmap). This roadmap is the railways' response to

Analysis

So long Berlin. I'm off to a Bourgogne village

On 27th September, a removal truck will pull up outside the building in Berlin Neukölln I currently call home, and into it will go my belongings. My time in Berlin will be over. I'll race ahead of the truck in a train, and from that evening Ravières (population:

Analysis

Note to the new EU Transport Commissioner: fixing cross border rail ticketing will help millions of Europeans, and can secure your legacy

Dear 2024 nominee for European Commissioner for Transport, Congratulations on your nomination. Being Transport Commissioner is a massive challenge, and an enormous privilege. As pretty much all of us living in the EU use some sort of transport every day, what you do is going to have an impact on

Analysis

Schlimmer geht immer - rumours about the transport portfolio in the next European Commission

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

Analysis

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

Analysis

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

Analysis

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

Analysis

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

Analysis

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.

Analysis

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

Analysis

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,

Analysis

Yield management and compulsory reservation - how much of each should we tolerate in railways?

Is taking a train something you do every day, rivaling a car? Something flexible, you just get on and go? Or is it something you do less regularly? Something where you plan, that you know long ahead where and when you will travel? More similar to how most people take

Albania

#CrossBorderRail South East Europe - crowdfunding now open

Since embarking on my first #CrossBorderRail tour in the summer of 2022 and follow up smaller tours in 2023, internal railway borders of the European Union have been my prime focus - and so far I have been to exactly 200 borders (you can see them all mapped here -

Analysis

"Europa spoort niet" - reflections on appearing in vpro's documentary about European railways

On 3rd March the documentary "Europa spoort niet" aired on NPO2, the Dutch public state broadcaster's TV channel. It is in the documentary series Tegenlicht, produced by vpro. You can watch the whole thing (50 mins) with Dutch subtitles here, and there is a version for

Analysis

How green are Europe's railways?

At one level the answer to the question posed in the title of this post is obvious: very green. This 2020 report (PDF) by the European Environment Agency puts some numbers on it, summarised in this graph: I might quibble with some of the numbers here, but the overall picture

Analysis

Trainline, Rail Europe and Omio - only inadvertently solving cross-border rail ticketing headaches

"What ticketing platform can you recommend for cross-border railway bookings, Jon?" is a question I receive quite often. And the answer, rather disappointingly, is "It depends where you're going." Or - put that another way - I can give none of the third party

Analysis

A hydrogen tram for Görlitz: about the worst idea I can imagine

"Görlitz bekommt die erste Wasserstoff-Straßenbahn Europas" - "Görlitz will get the first hydrogen tram in Europe" the article claims. It might as well be entitled "Görlitz has decided to go for the most stupid public transport idea imaginable" It's not only that

Analysis

There'll be a new European Commissioner for Transport in 2024 - but I'm not hopeful for change

It's my enduring memory of European Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean. I was a passenger on the EU Year of Rail publicity train - the Connecting Europe Express - between Kraków and Ljubljana. And who was there to greet the train's arrival at Ljubljana station -

Analysis

What Analysis would you like to read? Send me your ideas, and I will have a go

Writing a detailed explainer about Channel Tunnel through services was an idea I have had for a while. But that a 10000 word piece would be one of my most-read blog posts ever comes as a positive surprise! So that then leads me to wonder: what further Analysis pieces would

Analysis

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,

Analysis

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

Analysis

NEWAG's digital sabotage of Koleje Dolnośląskie (Dolny Śląsk) trains - what were they thinking?

In the past couple of days, my Mastodon feed has been full of astonishment about how three Polish IT specialists discovered digital sabotage attempts in trains built by manufacturer NEWAG. The original Mastodon toot is here, and there is more detail about the case in Polish, German and English. Read

Analysis

European Commission's cross border pilot projects - a good idea

The European Commission's cross border pilot projects are a good idea - but not the way the Commission communicates it In January 2023 the European Commission announced its 10 cross border railway pilot projects. That the Commission would do this was a commitment in its 2021 action plan

Analysis

So party politics did not work. It's time to solve Europe's railway problems some other way

"Machen, was zählt" - "Do, what counts" That was the slogan of the party conference of the German Grüne this week in Karlsruhe, and I was running for a place on the party's European Parliament election list. That effort failed completely yesterday evening when