This morning I was meant to take Flixbus 1324 from Amsterdam Sloterdijk to Berlin ZOB, booked because Deutsche Bahn train drivers are striking today. Needs must and all that. The timetable for the service is departing Sloterdijk at 06:10 and arriving ZOB at 16:20, before the bus continues onwards to […]
Tag: Ticketing
Mannheim-Bruxelles in 1972, and what it tells us about Mannheim-Bruxelles today
I stumbled across this little gem on Facebook – posted by Peter Osten (one of my predecessors as President of JEF Europe) and reproduced here with his permission. It is a rail ticket from April 1972 Mannheim Hbf – Bruxelles return, and it cost DM 95.20. Look at it closely […]
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 privately owned booking platforms a universal […]
Why DB Reiseasukunft on the web is still my main train planning tool
This week’s schedule: Tuesday – train Berlin-Bruxelles Wednesday – train Bruxelles-Maastricht-Bruxelles Friday – train Bruxelles-Berlin Three countries. Borders I have crossed dozens of times before. But not altogether simple when it comes to the railway connections. At least I know that for all of these countries all trains will reliably […]
How to actually build Europe-wide multimodal public transport booking platforms
On Page 29 of the draft European Parliament election programme of the German Grüne (full PDF in German here), you can find this text (my translation): What is taken for granted when booking flights should in future also be standard for all train journeys in Europe. With a cross-provider ticketing […]
Simple international trips, and the failures of ticket booking platforms
I am at World Passengers’ Festival in Vienna today, and four ticket vendors are here: Trip.com, Trainline, Rail Europe and All Aboard. So, I wondered, how do these platforms do with some pretty simple international journeys? And based on this research I am going to go to their stands here […]