Thalys Archives - Jon Worth

Will there be a direct train from [insert city] to London through the Channel Tunnel? Probably not

Basel, Switzerland. The latest city for which a direct train to London has been proposed. It is unlikely to get it, as are Geneva, Köln (CDU-Green NRW coalition agreement Page 132), Frankfurt and Bordeaux. And Marseille and Lyon are unlikely to get their direct trains to London back. There are[Read More…]

13.03.2023 6 comments

Make international rail cheaper? Capacity on a route is the crucial issue

It’s a common refrain: more people would take the train – especially on international routes – if only it were cheaper! That line of argument assumes that there are actually more trains to take. In other words that there is spare capacity. The problem is that – in many cases[Read More…]

06.03.2023 1 comment

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[Read More…]

16.01.2023 1 comment

Analysis

How to book Brussels-Amsterdam rail tickets – a further example of the absurdity of cross border rail in the EU

“Jon, did you know?” a friend asked me today. “There’s now Eurostar Brussels to Amsterdam and it’s cheaper than the Thalys!” As a rail nerd I did of course know it exists but I have not had the chance to take it yet. But that gave me the idea for a[Read More…]

11.01.2020 9 comments

A rail postcard from Brussels

(this is part of my Rail Postcards to the Transport Commissioner series – you can find all the other postcards here) Dear Violeta, I’d hoped to not have to write another one of these postcards to you so soon after my last one. But things go wrong all too regularly[Read More…]

18.02.2017 9 comments

A rail postcard from Aachen

Dear Violeta, Today I am writing to you from Aachen, and I am not here for the Christmas Market. I am here because I am stuck due to the immense incompetence of European railways and the lack of basic collaboration between them in the interests of passengers. This story is going[Read More…]

17.12.2016 5 comments

Analysis

Thalys IZY: market segmentation is not the same as competition

So Thalys – whose rail service always strikes me as the worst combination of anglo-saxon economics and Belgian service – has a new wheeze. A new, lower cost, but slower train between Paris and Brussels, branded IZY (Easy – geddit?) It’s like Thalys’s version of OUIGO, the low cost TGV[Read More…]

02.03.2016 0 comments

Why securing Europe’s railways against terrorism shouldn’t be attempted

So apparently this morning Ségolène Royal, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, has announced that security gates will be built to access Thalys trains: https://twitter.com/jul_mm/status/669058150729957377 De Telegraaf interprets this as meaning bag scanners, going further than La Voix du Nord does (although their story also says the gates (portiques)[Read More…]

24.11.2015 0 comments

Analysis

Topic 1 for NL-UK dialogue: rail tickets (London-Bruxelles-Rotterdam)

I’m lucky enough to have received an invite to The Apeldoorn Conference on UK-Netherlands dialogue, taking place 6-8 March in Rotterdam. An easy and high speed train journey – perfect! The route is Eurostar to Bruxelles Midi, then Thalys on the new HSL-Zuid to Rotterdam Centraal. Total journey time is just[Read More…]

24.01.2011 0 comments