To Compete With The Car, Multimodal Door-To-Door Bookings Using Ground-Based Public Transport Must Be Possible
This month, at a meeting in Brussels, European Transport Ministers called on the EU to make rail the backbone of European mobility and that “passengers can easily compare, book and pay for their door-to-door train journey in a trans-European perspective".
It must be possible for travellers to book door-to-door journeys across the EU using ground-based public transport at the same App or website – in one single transaction - with rail as the backbone of the trip.
ALLRAIL Secretary General Nick Brooks awarded with the Annual German Rail Passenger Prize at the annual conference of German Rail Passenger Association ProBahn
The German Passenger Federation PRO BAHN has presented ALLRAIL Secretary General Nick Brooks with its Annual Passenger Award. This is due to ALLRAIL’s efforts to make the purchase of rail tickets in Europe as simple as possible for passengers.
Eurostar and five more operators join the Agreement on Journey Continuation: what does it entail?
Eurostar, MÁV-Start, HŽPP, LTG Link, PKP Intercity, and GYSEV will soon join the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC).
Nick Brooks, Secretary General of ALLRAIL says : "Although it is a step in the right direction, the Agreement is still suboptimal for those whom it is meant to serve: the passengers. This is because it remains voluntary, there is always the risk that an operator can leave at will. Hence it remains a lottery. In the Single EU Rail Market, where the need to change trains between any 2 places is on average much higher than buses, cars or planes, this is simply not good enough.”
EU Commission’s new Action Plan shows urgent change is necessary – but by 2024 and not 2030
Yesterday (14 December), the EU Commission (EC) published a new Action Plan to grow long-distance & cross-border passenger rail in Europe, which aims to increase the very low modal share of rail passenger traffic.
The main barriers have been identified, and it is clear that the EC understands that urgent change is necessary. For example: in ticketing, where cross-border rail journeys should become easier to book and entail less risk for passengers, and we should not need to wait until 2030 in order for this to happen.
New articles by Investigate Europe reveal growth of cross-border rail is hampered by protectionism
In a major new set of articles, independent reports from Investigate Europe have revealed that the growth of European cross-border passenger rail is still severely hampered by many national governments protecting their state-owned railway companies.
In the 6-7 countries where it has been allowed to happen so far, market liberalisation has really boosted modal shift to rail.
Yet in most of Europe we still see governments deliberately delaying rail liberalisation until the 2030s and sabotaging the goals of the EU Green Deal.