The comission is planning changes to train travel in Europe to make it less of a headache for passengers.
-Single booking tickets that work across different operators.
-Passenger safety nets such as reroutings, reimbursements and compensations.
-New rules for operators and platforms to ensure fair pricings and route options.
Maybe the goal is a bit ambitious yes. But at least it’s promising that the Commission has recognized some very real issues with train travel in Europe and announced they are drafting a plan to fix them.
Going across several countries by train and then experiencing a delay that disrupts your entire schedule is a miserable experience. You’re left having to contact several rail operators’ customer support channels (some of which barely offer service in a language you understand), just to maybe try and patch up your trip.
I hope that, at the very least, they manage to implement some sort of one-ticket solution with a decent safety net.
The EU is a slow moving train, at least when the roof isn’t already burning (in which case it can move a lot faster, even if still slower than nation states). The incredible complexity of the topic and centuries of fragmented history in the business don’t help either. But we should not confuse glacial speed with nothing happening. The EU is working on harmonising railways in a lot of different ways and some have already made a meaningful difference. Interoperatibility has generally improved. New projects are constructed generally according to pan-European standards etc. The booking issue is a tough nut to crack but from the recent news I take it that even the Commission is loosing patience and ready to unpack harsher instruments towards railway operators. On one side that helps them “motivate” to find proper solutions on their own, and if not, then doing it the hard way.