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European railways have been given until the end of this year to come up with a ticketing system that is accessible to all via an app, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans has said in a Dutch radio interview with BNR. “If they don’t, we will enforce it legally. I’m sick...
www.railtech.com
European railways have been given until the end of this year to come up with a ticketing system that is accessible to all via an app, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans has said in a Dutch radio interview with BNR. “If they don’t, we will enforce it legally. I’m sick of it”, he stressed.
Timmermans’ goal is that is should be easy for every (Dutch) citizen to book an international train ticket using your phone. “People do want to take the train, but you have to make it easier for them.” Cross-continent railway travel is front-and-centre in the Commission’s long-term mobility strategy, and it presented an Action Plan last year. How exactly the mandate for an open rail ticketing system would look like remains unclear.
This is desperately needed, especially if there is any serious ambition to tempt people away from air travel ... but will they manage to make it happen?
A not bad twitter thread here outlining the main issues:
European railways have been given until the end of this year to come up with a ticketing system that is accessible to all via an app, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans has said in a Dutch radio interview with BNR. “If they don’t, we will enforce it legally. I’m sick...
www.railtech.com
This is desperately needed, especially if there is any serious ambition to tempt people away from air travel ... but will they manage to make it happen?
A not bad twitter thread here outlining the main issues:
I do find it interesting that as soon as you try to get an international journey out of the NS web site it throws you off and on to their international site, whereas other countries seem to manage it all on the same planner.
I do find it interesting that as soon as you try to get an international journey out of the NS web site it throws you off and on to their international site, whereas other countries seem to manage it all on the same planner.
They don't need an integrated fares system (and when there was one in the form of TCV through ticketing it was very expensive). They just need the UK rule that a split, however purchased, gives the same rights as a through fare.
I found one of the SNCB station ticket machines quite entertaining too. Attempting to get a ticket to Amsterdam, it told me I had to select international tickets. So I did, but the list of stations didn't include the Netherlands.
Then I saw a sticker on the machine saying that I should instead have selected the "IC Netherlands" option which worked nicely.
They don't need an integrated fares system (and when there was one in the form of TCV through ticketing it was very expensive). They just need the UK rule that a split, however purchased, gives the same rights as a through fare.
That's sort of what the chap says in the twitter thread linked in the OP.
But there also needs to be some way of reliably and easily getting a fare between any pair of stations. As I understand it, that means getting all timetable and fare information into some kind of single standard.
They don't need an integrated fares system (and when there was one in the form of TCV through ticketing it was very expensive). They just need the UK rule that a split, however purchased, gives the same rights as a through fare.
That would certainly be a help, though in one of the links to the article it was pointed out that if a country with reliable services keeps ending up with overcrowding because another one is constantly delivering passengers late they might want some compensation.
And there are also issues over what happens if one part of the trip is cancelled making it useless and you have to cancel. You'd want to be able to get your money back for the other legs I think. All of which could be legislated for I suppose.
But while we don't necessarily need an integrated fares system, that's only part of the solution. People shouldn't have to book three separate tickets on three separate web sites even if they get protection for delays and cancellations once they have.
What's needed is a single place to buy tickets that can also offer the cheapest tickets - it's not much use otherwise. So I think you'd have to mandate some kind of API that gave the same booking opportunities as using a company's web site directly.
if a country with reliable services keeps ending up with overcrowding because another one is constantly delivering passengers late they might want some compensation.
But there also needs to be some way of reliably and easily getting a fare between any pair of stations. As I understand it, that means getting all timetable and fare information into some kind of single standard.
Which I imagine is not so easy with demand pricing.
I could easily see this ending up as a completely useless solution where you can buy a ticket between any two stations in Europe so long as the fare is made up out of fully flexible fixed price tickets. (Actually, now I think about it I can't, because plenty of services now only have demand pricing).
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I don't know. In some ways working out who is responsible for shelling out money to a fixed formula sounds easier than deciding what the appropriate compensation should be for making someone else's trains too busy.
And I've just seen that the link at the bottom mentions another problem - that of different booking horizons. Wait until seats are available on leg 1, and prices have got too high (or there are no seats left) on leg 2.
But if the EU is serious about getting people off planes and onto trains, no doubt there is a solution somewhere
What's needed is a single place to buy tickets that can also offer the cheapest tickets - it's not much use otherwise. So I think you'd have to mandate some kind of API that gave the same booking opportunities as using a company's web site directly.
Yeah, an API is probably the way to go. To be fair, if we were privatising our railways now (I'd imagine we wouldn't, but if we were), ORCATS is without doubt *not* the way it would be done, it's an old fashioned solution.
I do find it interesting that as soon as you try to get an international journey out of the NS web site it throws you off and on to their international site, whereas other countries seem to manage it all on the same planner.
Other country's national operators usually don't have a separate website for the international branch. Or it even isn't a separate entity like the Netherlands.
But the main reason probably is that the domestic NS planner has been simplified to just give an advised route. We don't need options like reservations or pre-booking of advance fares with the fare structure in the Netherlands. Other countries offer those also domestically, so it makes sense to have just one booking engine/journey planner that is capable of all those additional options.
Planning across borders however works fine in the NS app.
Which I imagine is not so easy with demand pricing.
I could easily see this ending up as a completely useless solution where you can buy a ticket between any two stations in Europe so long as the fare is made up out of fully flexible fixed price tickets. (Actually, now I think about it I can't, because plenty of services now only have demand pricing).
Again...it seems to be possible within the UK, where you can now fairly reliably get combinations of demand-priced tickets from different operators via sites like trainsplit.
But still doesn't do anything about the booking horizon problem. I suppose it's less of an issue given that unlike in the UK they generally seem to be quite happy to sell tickets for a particular service even when they know there is going to be disruption due to engineering and haven't sorted out the details yet. But then when they do load the information in, and your connection to the next ticket breaks....
But the main reason probably is that the domestic NS planner has been simplified to just give an advised route. We don't need options like reservations or pre-booking of advance fares with the fare structure in the Netherlands. Other countries offer those also domestically, so it makes sense to have just one booking engine/journey planner that is capable of all those additional options.
Perhaps they have oversimplified things, given there are cheaper advance fares of a sort (and heavily discounted group tickets) but you just have to know to go to a different part of the web site for them. I nearly paid a a lot over the odds because of that. While I can think of the odd exception, most countries include the full range of tickets in their travel planners.
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Again...it seems to be possible within the UK, where you can now fairly reliably get combinations of demand-priced tickets from different operators via sites like trainsplit.
It is I am sure entirely possible in principle to set up such a system. Making disparate computer systems interact properly is non trivial even where there is the will to do so, but setting up an API which lets a computer run queries and purchase tickets in the same way as a user does via the web seems to me a reasonable thing to try.
It works fine for trains in the UK of course because it's all done using the same system rather than each operator having their own. It would be harder to make it work with (when they existed) Megatrain tickets because they were handled completely separately.
I don't know how airline ticketing is handled these days. There was and maybe still is an industry-wide system (SABRE?) which contained schedules and fares and enabled travel agents to sell tickets. I don't think it was compatible with the demand pricing that came in with budget airlines and I remember their fares not being available on airline booking web sites. Now budget airlines do seem to be. I don't know how it's implemented and there might be lessons to be learned there.
But for the various reasons discussed above it's not quite as simple as with airlines, and of course if you just buy two tickets from different airlines to make one journey there's generally no protection at all if you miss a connection (or indeed in some cases with the same airline).
But still doesn't do anything about the booking horizon problem. I suppose it's less of an issue given that unlike in the UK they generally seem to be quite happy to sell tickets for a particular service even when they know there is going to be disruption due to engineering and haven't sorted out the details yet. But then when they do load the information in, and your connection to the next ticket breaks....
I don't know how airline ticketing is handled these days. There was and maybe still is an industry-wide system (SABRE?) which contained schedules and fares and enabled travel agents to sell tickets. I don't think it was compatible with the demand pricing that came in with budget airlines and I remember their fares not being available on airline booking web sites. Now budget airlines do seem to be. I don't know how it's implemented and there might be lessons to be learned there.
There are a few GDSs (Global Distribution System) and booking sites like Expedia and Opodo tend to search them all, I believe. Budget airlines as you say weren't originally in them but have increasingly been adding themselves to them because many corporates mandate that you book via their system (ClickTravel and the likes) or you can't use that airline, so they lose the business if the corporate booking sites can't see them.
The difference with air travel is that most people undertaking it have travel insurance, so if a pair of separately ticketed legs miss you just claim off that. People making domestic rail journeys or day trips within Europe tend not to have this applicable to their journey so a miss hits them hard in the pocket.
But surely it's not just a question of when you open trains for booking, but when you finalise timetables? So it might require some countries to start planning timetables earlier than at present, or those who plan further in advance to not release tickets until later than they currently do.
There are a few GDSs (Global Distribution System) and booking sites like Expedia and Opodo tend to search them all, I believe. Budget airlines as you say weren't originally in them but have increasingly been adding themselves to them because many corporates mandate that you book via their system (ClickTravel and the likes) or you can't use that airline, so they lose the business if the corporate booking sites can't see them.
I imagine that this was also a technical issue, as the original systems operated a fairly crude model for demand pricing - so many seats in each fare category on each flight, with a given fare being valid for a particular fare category and with whatever other restrictions the airline felt appropriate (like booking 21 days ahead, staying a Saturday night). I suspect even the early budget airline demand pricing models were more sophisticated than that could cope with. Presumably now the systems can interface directly with the airline's booking system - in a similar way that we've been talking about doing with railways (and which presumably already happens to some extent, but not enough).
The difference with air travel is that most people undertaking it have travel insurance, so if a pair of separately ticketed legs miss you just claim off that.
I haven't looked for a while, but when I last did travel insurance still seemed to be written for a world when missing a connection was the airline's fault.
Cover if your car broke down or there were train delays and you got to the airport late, but once you'd left the UK anything else that happened on the way out was your problem, with the equivalent on the way back.
The booking horizon thing doesn't have to be a fundamental problem, surely, rather something that could be improved over time. If you have a mixture of operators with 2 to 9 month booking horizons then you can at least have a system where you should be able to see all journeys up to 2 months. Then beyond that, you'd have to have some journeys "not yet available" but that would be much better than nothing.
I've always wondered how the bahn.de website works behind the scenes - you can get it to plan (albeit not price) some impressively long journeys with 10+ connections across multiple countries even extending outside of the EU. So it must be able to look up some kind of standardised format of timetable (if not fare) information. Or is there a room full of people at DB HQ who sit and go through other countries' timetables and enter them into DB's own system?
According to Seat 61, there is the "Agreement on Journey Continuation", signed by the main train operators in western Europe, meaning that you should generally be fine if you miss a connection
Plan a train journey across Europe with this advice...
www.seat61.com
In July 2017, 14 national rail operators signed an agreement which means in the event of a delay and missed connection, they will allow you to travel onwards by a later train at no charge even if you have separate tickets for each train and those trains are run by different operators, as long as both operators are signatories to the agreement.
In other words, these operators agree to apply the CIV missed connection protection even between separate contracts for transportation.
Eurostar, Thalys, Thello aren't signatories even though they are wholly-owned subsidiaries of an operator who has signed the AJC.
However, I have been told (but cannot confirm) that Eurostar have agreed to apply the AJC even though they are not a signatory.
The AJC also doesn't currently cover open-access operators such as Italo, Westbahn, Regiojet, Leo Express.
You have to be making an international journey, not a purely domestic one. Both trains have to be run by signatories to the agreement. You must have allowed reasonable period of time between trains, meaning at least the minimum applied by official journey planners. You may need to get proof of the delay from the delayed operator (which they are obliged to give you). Onward travel has to be on the same operator on the same route. It is either the station staff or the train manager for the onward train you gives you permission, you should ask at the interchange station.
Remember that AJC is a commercial agreement between operators, not a passenger right you can claim, so politely remind staff about it if they don't seem to know.
I imagine that this was also a technical issue, as the original systems operated a fairly crude model for demand pricing - so many seats in each fare category on each flight, with a given fare being valid for a particular fare category and with whatever other restrictions the airline felt appropriate (like booking 21 days ahead, staying a Saturday night). I suspect even the early budget airline demand pricing models were more sophisticated than that could cope with. Presumably now the systems can interface directly with the airline's booking system - in a similar way that we've been talking about doing with railways (and which presumably already happens to some extent, but not enough).
I believe "Skylights", the original low cost airline booking engine, did use fare buckets the same as traditional airlines - but I suspect they are indeed just an API these days, effectively.
I've always wondered how the bahn.de website works behind the scenes - you can get it to plan (albeit not price) some impressively long journeys with 10+ connections across multiple countries even extending outside of the EU. So it must be able to look up some kind of standardised format of timetable (if not fare) information. Or is there a room full of people at DB HQ who sit and go through other countries' timetables and enter them into DB's own system?
There is some sort of international timetable database, which includes most but not all services (local trains in Spain are missing...). However, it is not necessarily updated between the standard change dates. Indeed, DB themselves change times frequently for engineering works even after selling you a ticket, and they are not alone....
Both Raileurope and Trainline can sell tickets from multiple booking engines, but they don't cope well with varied booking horizons.
The booking horizon thing doesn't have to be a fundamental problem, surely, rather something that could be improved over time. If you have a mixture of operators with 2 to 9 month booking horizons then you can at least have a system where you should be able to see all journeys up to 2 months. Then beyond that, you'd have to have some journeys "not yet available" but that would be much better than nothing
But you'll still likely end up with the problem that in many cases if booking in advance to get the best fares you can't book in one go because by the time you can book all the legs (and maybe one is just a short local connection) one one or more has got more expensive.
There is some sort of international timetable database, which includes most but not all services (local trains in Spain are missing...). However, it is not necessarily updated between the standard change dates.
And while DB was at one time unusual I think in having most trains in Europe in their journey planner (even the UK!), it's certainly not the only one any more. The CD planner, for example, is pretty good (in some ways I think more useful than the DB one).
According to Seat 61, there is the "Agreement on Journey Continuation", signed by the main train operators in western Europe, meaning that you should generally be fine if you miss a connection
There is, though I think something a bit more comprehensive is needed. I'm not sure if it's any use either if a train is cancelled rather than just delayed. And having Eurostar and Thalys missing is a pretty major omission (though they're part of the similar "HOTNAT" scheme I think).
For most people, certainly most people who are used to travelling internationally by air, these kinds of agreements aren't really enough to be reassuring. Checking that all your journey legs are on operators who are signatories, making sure you've complied with minimum change times and so on ... most people aren't going to go through all that when the alternative is to go on skyscanner and book the journey by air in one go.
And if you're travelling through several countries most of which you don't speak the native language of, then the idea of something going wrong and then having to sort it out and argue your case is even more intimidating.
For most people, certainly most people who are used to travelling internationally by air, these kinds of agreements aren't really enough to be reassuring. Checking that all your journey legs are on operators who are signatories, making sure you've complied with minimum change times and so on ... most people aren't going to go through all that when the alternative is to go on skyscanner and book the journey by air in one go.
Quite. And then hoping that the agreements will actually be honoured (never tried it myself but what I've read hasn't been entirely reassuring).
What you need is a single place to buy your ticket from, with an assurance that you're covered for missed connections - in writing, on the ticket, to wave at staff if required.
And, while I'm wishing for unreasonable things, how about a system where you can just get on the next train (at least if it's not reservation compulsory) without having to find someone to stamp your ticket to approve it (how does that work anyway with an e-ticket?)?
This is really good news. As an example, I was planning a journey from the Netherlands to Lille recently and I needed a spreadsheet to work out which combination of tickets from different websites was cheapest. NS international doesn’t give any fares at all for non-TGV journeys. NMBS gave some overpriced combination of tickets. Eventually, I found out that splitting at the first and last station in Belgium is cheapest, because it’s then possible to use very cheap travel anywhere within Belgium tickets. Those can of course only be bought from the domestic NMBS website. This took lots more time than I hoped, and how would any normal passenger be able to find out how to make this journey? Probably they will buy expensive TGV tickets or not travel at all.
Even a direct international train might only be possible to use by buying two tickets. For example, Besançon Viotte to La Chaux-de-Fonds, a regional TER (SNCF) train that runs three times a day. I couldn't see any direct fares on either the TER or SBB sites. After enquiring with a friend who works on Swiss railways, you have to split at Le Locle-Col-des-Roches, the border station on the Swiss side.
Even a direct international train might only be possible to use by buying two tickets. For example, Besançon Viotte to La Chaux-de-Fonds, a regional TER (SNCF) train that runs three times a day. I couldn't see any direct fares on either the TER or SBB sites. After enquiring with a friend who works on Swiss railways, you have to split at Le Locle-Col-des-Roches, the border station on the Swiss side.
Is trainline.eu possibly the bones of the booking engine needed?
It appears to show competing services impartially, and the prices look reasonable (ie no big hikes from the operator-specific fares).
I haven't used it enough to know how useful this site is, now in SNCF ownership.
For Chambery-Turin, a journey I did earlier this year, it shows both SNCF and Trenitalia services at similar prices to booking directly with the operator, who only show their own services on their booking engine.
My actual journey that day continued to Bologna after a 2-hour break in Turin.
I wasn't able to book the whole journey on one ticket, even though TI was the operator on both legs, but you can do that sort of thing with a DB ticket, which I used on the Bologna-Munich leg of my trip.
It's a fiendishly difficult task to capture all the options, restrictions and Ts & Cs of all the operators en route, even in one country.
For example, TI has different fare levels for class, level of service and lead time before travel.
I'd expect to have to pay a premium to have all that small print removed to deliver one flexible ticket.
The airlines' advantage is that they don't normally interwork, and only offer bilateral A-B fares regardless of the number of states they are flying over.
The railway has to find some way to equably compensate all the individual administrations needed en route, and yet still produce an attractive fare.
The niche situation you describe applies to only a tiny percentage of passengers. The vast majority make a simple return journey, and know exactly when they are travelling out and back. Or they are travelling with low cost airlines that have single leg pricing anyway.
I'm not a fan of the "change this or else" approach to legislation - it allows unsavoury companies to take liberties. It's far better to have such obligations clearly defined and enforceable.
I do find it interesting that as soon as you try to get an international journey out of the NS web site it throws you off and on to their international site, whereas other countries seem to manage it all on the same planner.
What is so interesting about that? If you plan an INTernational trip on bahn (DB) it will also after a few questions now put you on a kind of special other part of its site.
In fact Slovenia Railways make it even worse-or practic, if you wish, given the circumstances of this small country: it simply tells you to go to bahn.de or oebb.at which will do it for you!
But the catch is in this proposal that as such in fact it kind of exist: like on the trainline (former loco2) -or for a slightly longer trip in many cases an INterRail will work out as best buy-the devil is as so often in the details: just see the enormous amount of doubts/questions/special cases/etc. that are asked for every day on these common forums.
For airlines there is as such IATA-ticketing, but nearly half of all airlines do not accept that anymore and having to do split bookings also often sends the passenger in the dark woods. In fact an awful long time ago IATA was more or less based on the system the combined railways has already developed. That was a long time before there were even computers.
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The booking horizon thing doesn't have to be a fundamental problem, surely, rather something that could be improved over time. If you have a mixture of operators with 2 to 9 month booking horizons then you can at least have a system where you should be able to see all journeys up to 2 months. Then beyond that, you'd have to have some journeys "not yet available" but that would be much better than nothing.
I've always wondered how the bahn.de website works behind the scenes - you can get it to plan (albeit not price) some impressively long journeys with 10+ connections across multiple countries even extending outside of the EU. So it must be able to look up some kind of standardised format of timetable (if not fare) information. Or is there a room full of people at DB HQ who sit and go through other countries' timetables and enter them into DB's own system?
@1: it is-f.e. some minor lines in Spain are now not even timetabled for over 4 weeks. And there is always the major break when in general timetables change (that magic 2nd sunday in december). Very inconvenient and incomprehensable for all those wanting to make their precious winter-ski arrangements in autumn.
@2: there IS such a system, perhaps even also EU-regulated, named MERITS: but not all railways even choose -or bother- to have their data uploaded to it. F.e. one can see this in the general INterrail-app, which should cover in theory all the 33 participating countries, only Albania (and the broad gauge former Soviet states, except the 3 Baltics) out of it in all of Europe. But that has always been a notable outsider.
In the days of yore that TCV/SPSS-fare system even reached as far as into Vietnam via China (i.e. the whole communist world of that time) and a long time ago even also as far as Iran and Iraq via Turkey-it was just the ticket/fare, leaving you to make your own arrangements for the reservations/seats etc-when needed on the way.
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