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 […]
Tag: Deutsche Bahn
How to use Deutsche Bahn’s De Connect tickets for train trips between Germany and London
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 […]
Skyscanner for rail? Before we can even build such a thing we need a European rail timetable
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 […]
#BerlinBledBerlin trip report
I am writing this blog post at the end of a 5 day trip from Berlin to Bled in Slovenia by train and back, through the 4th wave of the COVID pandemic and crossing Austria in lockdown. I’ve been tweeting about the trip as I went along on the hashtag […]
#ZugGegenFlug – an idea
Mark Smith and Simon Calder are having a race today. Mark is taking the new Lumo train from London to Edinburgh, and Simon is racing him – on a flight. It’s a bit of fun, but with a serious purpose – as passengers often underestimate the time it takes them […]
How to book a Stockholm-Hamburg train ticket, using the Stockholm-Malmö night train
*** WARNING: I have never done this personally! Attempt this at your own risk! *** Anders Peterson, Associate Professor in traffic systems at Linköping University in Sweden, posed an interesting question on Twitter: An attractive train route from Sweden to continental Europe is train 3 (night train Stockholm-Malmö), Ø-train (shuttle […]
Long distance rail in Europe – an absence of a discernible strategy
Trains are a good thing. Capable of shipping huge quantities of people and freight over long distances and doing so without most of the downsides of road or air transport. Politicians of pretty much any political colour will be happy to say they are pro-rail. 2021 is even European Year of […]
Europatakt – a vision for EU-wide rail?
I have set foot in the Swiss town of Biel/Bienne more often than I care to remember, and for strictly 6 minutes each time. For that is where the Basel SBB-Lausanne InterCity train crosses the Zürich HB-Genève service, and as my trips are always Basel SBB – Genève, that’s where […]
How could the EU solve the night train conundrum? Procure a massive fleet of night train carriages and lease them to operators
From the doldrums of a few years ago – when Deutsche Bahn left the business of running night trains completely – this mode of transport is back. Or at least in terms of public attention it’s back. Snälltåget has bold plans for Sweden to Germany services in 2021, and the […]
Why is the Berlin-Amsterdam train so slow? And why is it so hard to do anything about it?
This tweet and news story from The Netherlands caught my eye this morning – “Dutch Railways will make trains to Berlin and Brussels much faster: “We want to seduce air passengers”” the title says. Whether prioritising that route – to get people off planes – even makes sense is open […]
Don’t be distracted by ÖBB’s shiny night train to Brussels – the problems of EU-wide rail run far deeper
Hey journalists! I’m glad to see you’re writing about trains! ÖBB running its first NightJet to Brussels seems to have got you into a particular frenzy. It’s amazing what a bit of red carpet at Gare du Midi, and Martin Selmayr on board, can do to generate a bit of […]
A rail postcard from Passow (Uckermark)
Dear Violeta, It has been a little while since I last wrote you a postcard from one of my cross-border rail trips. But this week I took a little journey from Berlin to Szczecin / Stettin in West Pomerania in Poland, represented in the European Parliament by Bogusław Liberadzki – […]