My previous post was a kind of hopeless “well we know the problems with railways, but what do we do?” Here – and motivated by Justin Scholz who has been pushing me to write this sort of thing for months – here are a series of policy proposals to fix […]
Tag: Ticketing
We know what’s wrong with European railways. Mostly. But how do we fix it?
Another day, another depressing study. Greenpeace looked at rail and motorway investments across Europe, and found 66 % more budget spent to extend roads than to extend railways. Between 1995 and 2018 there was a 60% increase in the length of Europe’s motorways – more than 30,000 km – while […]
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 […]
European railways and the implementation gap
I was recording an episode of the Human Risk podcast with Christian Hunt this week – basically about humans and railways – and the conversation came back to what I think I ought to call the implementation gap in railway policy. “When I moved to München“, Christian was telling me, […]
Reflections on rail advocacy in EU politics
That the European Union needs to get more passengers and freight onto its railways is a no-brainer. Europe has a dense network of railways, with a lot of them in reasonable condition, a decent percentage electrified, and plenty of lines allowing trains to run at a good speed. With roads […]
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 […]