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Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

euobserver.com

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Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#41

Post by doom2 »

raverbashing wrote: post #4

Really? > When travelling from Copenhagen to Warsaw or Lisbon to Marseille People pick the train because those trips are far enough to make the train a hassle But I can enter the origin train company sites (or the operator) and buy a ticket to another country "pretty easily" (for the last couple of times I did this). In fact buying online was easy enough.

Portugal in particular seems difficult to travel out of by rail. Lisbon to Madrid should be straightforward, but you have to get to Porto first, then to Vigo on the Spanish side, and THEN you can get to the rest of Spain. This also takes 24+ hours of travel. Meanwhile, the bus is only 10.5 hours and direct.

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#44

Post by soco »

atomflunder wrote: post #13

I travel between Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland somewhat regularly, not rarely passing through 3 of the 4 countries for a given trip. I use the Austrian national railway‘s (ÖBB) app to book my tickets, I get a single QR code on my phone that is valid for all legs of my journey, gets scanned by the personnel of whatever country‘s railway company, and I‘m good. Never had any problems whatsoever.

I wish the Swiss SBB app would have the same functionality. While in theory it should work the same, they just prefer to complain "no location signal" when you're outside country.

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#45

Post by Freak_NL »

Scoundreller wrote: post #21
Freak_NL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a train loving Dutchman the German bahn.de website is my go-to destination for any travelling from the Netherlands to Germany. It's just so much more convenient than the Dutch NS website. Fun loophole with those minimum transfer times, was it patched since? It's not something I would use; I don't mind paying a fair price for what is a form of transport much more sustainable than air travel, although I do like to f…

> loophole with those minimum transfer times I have to ask why it’s a loophole. OP consumed just as much train with long stops as someone that travelled directly. It’s odd, in aviation, you’ll pay less with longer layovers and more for direct, even though direct is the least miles in the air. I get it that suppliers like to charge more for more convenience but really, the cost of provision is the same (or less!).

It's a loophole because they can put a cap on these low early reservation, fixed itinerary prices because of the assumption that only people travelling on a shoe-string budget will do more than six hours of travelling in a single sitting. This keeps the number of travellers who do Norddeich Mole – Zagreb Glavni kolodvor (eighteen hours of train travel) to a minimum — essentially just some students and people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. A negligible number of people.

Once you start allowing extreme transfer times of 24 hours, you are basically inviting people to exploit that system, which will drive prices up eventually, because those people would otherwise have bought multiple tickets (one for each stage of the journey).

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#46

Post by soco »

reacharavindh wrote: post #15

One thing I particularly enjoy traveling by public transport within European countries is the use of a "travel card" - Rejsekort in Denmark and OV Chipkaard in Netherlands. They work as a simple card that you can "beep beep" whenever you use public transport and it works out the payment from attached bank account/card. It makes travel by public transport hassle-free. I only wish in this digital age, all EU countries…

There's a thing in Switzerland called "EasyRide" where you checkin at the start of your journey and check-out at the end, and it will calculate you the cheapest option for what it registered as movement - day cards included. And even if you check-in again later the same day it will just calculate the difference for the entire daytrip.

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#47

Post by tinus_hn »

Stranger43 wrote: post #29

The trick to get an flexible affordable ticket between European cities is to know that interrail tickets( https://www.interrail.eu ) is no longer limited to youngsters on a multiweek backpacking journey. Back when we were still allowed to travel i spend a fair bit of time traveling between non-airport cities which meant that an 8-10 hour cross border train ride was often the only alternative to even more time spend w…

This is incredible, how is it that I have never heard of this service?

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#48

Post by fignews »

mlok wrote: post #38

Slightly related : I have discovered an hour ago this interactive map of Europe which lets you know, given your starting train station, all the destinations you can reach directly without changing trains. https://direkt.bahn.guru/ (provided by Deutsche Bahn but not limited to their own trains)

This is so great, thanks for sharing. I’ve found some really amazing routes.

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#49

Post by MomoXenosaga »

Freak_NL wrote: post #17
lqet wrote: post #7

Sometimes this complexity can lead to nice loopholes. Some time ago I wrote a comment [0] which explained how we once tricked ourselves into a 1,500 km, 7 day train trip for 39 EUR: > Deutsche Bahn had (and still has I think) a "Europe Special" where you could buy a ticket from any town in Germany to any town in Europe for 39 EUR flat. Our idea was to travel through Croatia for a few weeks, starting from Zagreb. Sure…

As a train loving Dutchman the German bahn.de website is my go-to destination for any travelling from the Netherlands to Germany. It's just so much more convenient than the Dutch NS website. Fun loophole with those minimum transfer times, was it patched since? It's not something I would use; I don't mind paying a fair price for what is a form of transport much more sustainable than air travel, although I do like to f…

Ns.nl: in English button Bahn.de: English what's that?

Re: Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

#50

Post by MomoXenosaga »

jcfrei wrote: post #28
1cvmask wrote: post #3

Apparently there is little current economic incentive (or regulatory push) to streamline the process and take on airlines in cross-border travel: Railway companies are national in nature and by history. The share of cross-border travelling is small; the income mainly comes from national rail. - Obviously if they streamlined the process to take on airlines their revenue would increase. But perhaps the cost of streamli…

Rail services in European countries are not covering their costs in any country, as far as I know. Speaking of Switzerland (which is notably at the extreme end in terms of costs) public rail services are run a lot like infrastructure projects / economic booster packages by the government. Whether or not ticket prices or capacities are increased is more down to politics and economic perception than actual demand. So i…

If we actually had a high speed rail network that linked the big European cities it would pay for itself like in Japan. Tax kerosene and nobody would fly from Amsterdam to Berlin.
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