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.
There is no need for another ‘EU Railscanner’ concept. It has been existing for years!
In recent months, many EU stakeholders have called for setting up an 'EU Railscanner' digital platform, where all available rail options can be found. There is no need for a 10th impartial digital rail platform. Nine already exist!
Railway Gazette: Call for booking platforms to be given access to train operators’ data
EUROPE: The ALLRAIL association of independent passenger train operators and retailers has called on EU member states to ensure that market-dominant incumbent operators share their data with third party journey planning and ticket selling platforms.