France

A collection of 87 posts

France

Trenitalia to run London-Paris in 2029 - the most serious rival to Eurostar yet

As I raced around Europe during my #CrossChannelRail project for the past three weeks, it looked like there were three or possibly four private companies in the frame to rival Eurostar on high speed routes through the Channel Tunnel - Virgin Trains, Gemini, Evolyn and possibly Heuro. But today'

Analysis

New Channel Tunnel entrant? You need a plan for what happens if you fail, so you can actually succeed

No company wants to enter a market thinking they are going to fail. But what happens were they to fail might have a bearing on whether they succeed in the first place. It was with this in mind that I read this morning that Virgin Trains is looking for money

Belgium

The accessibility problems with Alstom's new TGV-M train - with implications for future Channel Tunnel operators

There is no way to sweeten this: my original conclusion that Alstom's Avelia Horizon (known as TGV-M with SNCF) is not legal at higher station platforms outside France was incorrect . Because transparency and correcting my errors matters to me, you can read the original blog entry in full

Analysis

Want to rival Eurostar on Channel Tunnel routes? How do you differentiate yourself?

For three weeks in late March and early April I am running a project called #CrossChannelRail that is looking at the future of long distance high speed train services through the Channel Tunnel. The future of Eurostar and any of its potential rivals if you like. A whole lot of

Analysis

Solving the Valence-Armentières Problem - the gold standard for railway trip planning and ticket sales

Geopolitics had the Schleswig Holstein Question. Machine intelligence has the Turing Test. Jumble those up, throw in a little extra European Union complexity, and I am proud to present you the railway equivalent: the Valence-Armentières Problem. At one level the theoretical solution to the problem is simple: calculate all the

Analysis

Bundling trip planning and ticketing together - it's not in the passengers' interest

A train trip between small or medium sized towns at opposite ends of France by train normally works like this: TER regional train to the nearest city, TGV at high speed across the country, and then a TER for the last leg. So let's take a worked example

Bulgaria

A story of two tunnels: Kriva Palanka to Gyushevo, and the Channel Tunnel

When I went to Kumanovo in June of 2024 and found a railway station half complete, I must admit I did not think trains would run there any time soon. But this week I was proven wrong - the first part of the line that will eventually connect Skopje ion

Analysis

More passengers are a problem for the railways

When - from a passenger point of view - I make the case why the EU ought to pass a Regulation to fix cross border railway ticketing, the reaction from the railway industry (especially state owned railway firms) is essentially "why should we make booking easier, because our cross

Analysis

In this peculiar world of cross border railways, the new slow Bruxelles-Paris OUIGO train makes sense

Bruxelles-Paris by Eurostar (ex-Thalys) 300km/h high speed train takes just 1 hour 22 minutes, but as anyone who has taken it in recent years can testify, the prices can be horribly high, mostly because capacity is not adequate and no one has yet entered the market against the incumbent.

Analysis

No Eurostar isn't the worst performing train company in Europe. But if you're T&E does it matter?

A message from a friend this morning: "Have you seen that piece in The Guardian saying Eurostar is the worst performing train service in Europe?" Oh what now, my heart sinking as I waited for her to send me the link. This is The Guardian's piece,

Austria

VDV on cross border re-activation of lines - nice idea, details more sketchy

The Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (VDV) (Association of German Transport Companies) has a detailed new website about reactivation of railway lines, and a PDF report with more detail. And one aspect of their proposals are cross-border reactivations that they have been publicising with the little infographic that I reproduce here. So

European Union

A partial #CrossBorderRail success - Deutsche Bahn Sparpreis cheap tickets now work to Strasbourg and to some other destination in Eastern France

Credit to one of my students at TU Braunschweig, Roland Sivonen, for discovering this one - Deutsche Bahn's cheap Sparpreis train tickets now work correctly from Germany to Strasbourg, and some other new destinations in France as well. In this blog post I am going to explain how

Analysis

International rail ticketing that is customer unfriendly - that is the system working as intended. We need EU law to change the system.

Justin Scholz, a thoughtful friend of mine, sent me a link to this post by Anil Dash, entitled "Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does" - do read it in full. Let's have a go applying this to international railway ticketing, and use

European Union

"Summer 2025" for the new Régiolis trains France-Germany - Leroy and Hermann are just picking dates at random

So the new Régiolis trains are going to be running on France-Germany routes in "Summer 2025" according to Transport Minister, Baden-Württemberg Winfried Hermann and President of Région Grand Est, Franck Leroy. They may as well be picking dates at random. It is all because of delayed approval of

France

How to not fall foul of SNCF's luggage rules

SNCF - for all TGV inOui and TER trains - introduced new luggage rules in February 2024, with a transition period up until mid September 2024 for their introduction, although it seems that even at the time of writing (August 2024) some SNCF staff are getting a bit over zealous

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:

European Union

30 trains costing €376 million for France-Germany services - parked up without any prospect of operations until 2027

Regional rail services between France and Germany are poor, but change is supposed to be around the corner. A fleet of new Régiolis trains for the these services has been ordered and built (and I set out to find them) but when the operations of these trains will start, and

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

France

Another #CrossBorderRail success - timetables for Irun-Hendaia Euskotren are finally in international timetable searches

A key message in all of my #CrossBorderRail work has been that some problems ought to be really easy to solve. The really, really, really easy ones ought to be the places where trains run, and even run with decent timetables, but there are data sharing problems - meaning the

European Union

France and Germany: united in what exactly when it comes to public transport?

I spent yesterday at the France-Germany border - I started in Freiburg, cycled to the human chain protest at Breisach, and cycled onwards to Colmar in France. The Association Trans Rhin Rail has been working for twelve years to try to re-open the cross border section of the Freiburg-Colmar line.

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

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

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