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.
Just based on the headline it’s nit that much different from what we get now. We already get compensated on missed connections for cross country bookings and although I get multiple tickets, I can have one booking for a long trip.
Price and reliability have been the biggest hurdles.
Where do you book? Afaik this is not a thing everywhere
It is very different from now, but it will take more time to become reality I guess. The compensation is just the nice to have. The core is that operators will be forced to open up their booking systems make them accessible so that unified booking platforms are made possible, if necessary by force. That would be a game changer. After all the booking systems exist, but rail companies are guarding them, hence the lack of interoperability.
Price and reliability do matter but don’t underestimate the role that booking and finding stuff makes. If you have to call somewhere, or worse, even go to an office somewhere to book a train trip, this is turning off a lot of people from even considering that option. Of course, things have become a lot better, gradually, over the years and on many trips one can book nowadays online but the offer is very splintered and very incomplete.