Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

euobserver.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–59 of 59 posts

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

#51

Post by ant6n »

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…

The infrastructure is subsidized, local transit is subsidized, but long distance and high speed rail operations can be profitable, even including the capex of rolling stock (In fact EU rules stipulate that they should be unsubsidized).

Also, the EU mandates open track access, which means technically it's possible for private companies to compete (and they do, there are several private operators like Flixtrain, RegioJet, LeoExpress, even a high speed one in Italy, Italo).

It's also possible to have rolling stock that is fairly usable all over Europe (RIC carriages, usually 200km/h). There is even a bit of a market for used vehicles. As for locomotives, traditionally they only work in one country, or perhaps two. Now there are more and more locomotives that work in multiple countries, e.g. TRAXX and Vectron. It's possible to rent carriages and trains. It's also possible to rent traction.

In some sense it's getting close to possible to do a startup in European rail. I'm thinking about the problem a lot.

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

#53

Post by occamschainsaw »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #49
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…

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

Try bahn.com, it is English by default. There is a language selection menu in bahn.de as well.

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

#54

Post by iostream23 »

doom2 wrote: post #41
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.

There’s the Alfa Pendular that goes Lisbon Madrid direct but there’s only one per day. It’s relatively rapid and comfortable, about 50 euro last time I rode. It’s a night train.

Most of the interior lines got shut down when they privatized CP and handed the state railway to one company and not more. The first thing they did was close many train lines. The lamentable decline of the Portuguese railway systems has happened on many levels, including local trains and trams like Coimbra shut down all east side lines and that entire mountain gateway area sits in decline with rotting properties and population flight and business closures etc…

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

#55

Post by bewo001 »

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.

If it is just to a neighboring country, it usually works well. Or if it is a direct connection through several countries. But if you have to change in a country you are just passing through, it all breaks down. Best to install the apps of all train operators you are going to use. Trainline et al would be great if they didn't mark connections as sold out so often that are perfectly available through the train operator's app.

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

#56

Post by Trombone12 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #47
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?

That would require some detail about where you grew up to answer, I think Interrail is fairly well known in Europe. Or do you simply mean the latest changes to the terms?

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

#57

Post by GekkePrutser »

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…

Additionally, a lot of countries in Europe view their airline as a national pride.. And so do anything to put it ahead. Trains are not as glamorous.

There's also very little capacity on the rail network and if they sell short trips as opposed to one long one they can sell the same seat multiple times over the same international trajectory. And in those short trips they don't have planes to compete with so they can ask higher prices.

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

#58

Post by GekkePrutser »

bullen wrote: post #20
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…

This and the kerosene is tax free, which is impossible to compete with.

The problem is if you do tax it, airlines are going to fill up in places like Dubai and drag tonnes of fuel across the world, leading to more fuel burn in general. For the environment it'd be a bad thing unless the tax were imposed globally.

This would have been an ideal point to agree on at Glasgow but of course it didn't happen.

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

#59

Post by tinus_hn »

Trombone12 wrote: post #56
tinus_hn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That would require some detail about where you grew up to answer, I think Interrail is fairly well known in Europe. Or do you simply mean the latest changes to the terms?

I grew up in the Netherlands. I remember there was a service like this but that had a different name, was before the age of the internet and was limited to young people only.
Post reply on HN