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The European Commission is consulting about the future of rail passenger rights: ec.social-network.europa.eu/@E…
I've written up what's at stake, and put my own response on my blog: jonworth.eu/replying-to-the-eu…
Replying to the European Commission's call for evidence on revision of Rail Passenger Rights - Jon Worth
On 20th August the European Commission heavily promoted (Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon) its public consultation on the revision of the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation.Jon Worth
🚆 Your rights should travel with you.We’re working to make rail journeys across the EU fairer, proposing stronger passenger rights when combining tickets from different railway operators, including rights to:
✅ Reimbursement
🔁 Re-routing
🆘 Assistance
💶 CompensationCurrently, these rights don’t fully apply here, and we are seeking a fix.
Got any ideas or views to share?
Have your say 👉 europa.eu/!WNbQTd
Commission launches call for evidence on revision to Rail Passenger Rights
The European Commission is requesting input from citizens and stakeholders on a planned targeted revision of the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation.Mobility and Transport
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Quixoticgeek
in reply to Jon Worth • • •I broadly agree. Except one word. Booked.
I don't want to book a ticket. I want to purchase a ticket. Booking a ticket usually comes with ridiculous restrictions on which train you can take. We need to stop treating trains like air travel and treat them as they are. Trains. That means buying a ticket, not booking one.
I also think rights shouldn't only be granted if you buy the ticket in a single transaction. But I fear that one I'll never win.
Jon Worth
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Quixoticgeek
in reply to Jon Worth • • •Sven Slootweg, ("still kinky and horny anyway")
in reply to Quixoticgeek • • •Jon Worth
in reply to Sven Slootweg, ("still kinky and horny anyway") • • •Wrzlbrnft
in reply to Jon Worth • • •Jon Worth
in reply to Wrzlbrnft • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •is there a good reason for through tickets to be restricted to tickets booked in one transaction? why not extend it to any series of tickets respecting reasonable connection times? that's how it works in the UK
Otherwise we need a ticket seller who can e.g. sell a DB Sparpreis and a TER Prem's in one go
a general obligation to help any stranded passengers is also important, the companies should fight over who pays what afterwards
Jon Worth
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •I can't imagine that ever happening, there's always going to be tickets that are only available from a limited number of sellers or that you have a good reason for buying in two transactions (different booking horizons for example)
D-Ticket/Klimaticket etc. are probably a good widespread use case, but there are billions of random ones, like, if you have a French relative who died in WWI/WWII you can get a free SNCF ticket once a year from the nearest mairie to their grave to visit them
Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •@bovine3dom At least if we also get a good SBTR, there’s a chance many use cases could be covered by existing or new booking portals.
But I would second your question on why NOT make it apply also for separate transactions. Realistically, the systems aren’t anyway going to support communicating the full extent of the trip to each carrier on the way. Although if it did that could be very useful and a reasonable requirement.
@jon
Jon Worth
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •they're going to be horrified when they learn about interrail/D-Ticket etc
sounds like something daft to push back on
@stefanlindbohm
Jon Worth
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •this going to sound terribly old fashioned but growing up if the last connecting train from London was late we would ask the guard to phone ahead to the harbour to hold the ferry
data is great but should be a value-add rather than "we need to strand these passengers overnight because they didn't help us clean our data"
@stefanlindbohm
Jon Worth
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •that is daft but i guess given the number of DB delays they would rack up huge phone bills
but in all seriousness going from "there are two tickets sold separately with this station in the middle" to "there is one connecting ticket sold through this station" is a data cleaning problem and making people sleep on benches overnight is not a proportionate response to that
@stefanlindbohm
Will Deakin
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •Jon Worth
in reply to Will Deakin • • •Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •it would be an absolutely tragic side effect if the new regulations persuaded the SNCF that it was cheaper to regularly run trains later than 7pm than pay for hotels for stranded passengers
@wnd @stefanlindbohm
Jon Worth
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •@bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm let’s work this through though
I can understand why this data COULD be beneficial to both firms and passengers.
BUT it poses some issues. Imagine Railfinder had to transfer this data to - say - SNCF and Renfe, how would it be done? And were it done how would the firms use it?
Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Jon Worth • • •i think it's totally the wrong approach. surely better to use navigation data on the day, remembering that, thankfully, even now most trains are still not compulsory reservation
no reason why they couldn't use e.g. DB Navigator trip following data instead. SNCF Connect obviously harder because it's so terrible no-one knows how to use it, so support Scotty instead
and sure the SNCF could and should buy some data off Railfinder :)
@stefanlindbohm
Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •@bovine3dom SNCF already has access to the same (static) data we do :)
Not sure I understand ”navigation data on the day”. The critical part isn’t necessarily the live data but the fact of a passenger connecting between two tickets. That would have to be reported by the reseller at a minimum to the issuer of the ticket earlier in the chain. With that knowledge, the carriers can arrange bilaterally in whatever way works for them.
@jon
Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •@stefanlindbohm most trains in Europe don't have compulsory reservations so you don't know which specific trains need to connect until someone is sat on the first train wanting to catch the second.
re data i am suggesting e.g. they might want to know how many passengers are connecting onto the ÖBB NightJet in Paris or trying to connect to a Frecciarossa at Lyon from a TER, in a bulk data kind of way.
it all seems like a minor reason to deny people passenger rights
@jon
Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •@bovine3dom I’d be happy enough if we solved reporting of the trip as planned at booking.
Solving flexible tickets would probably require the traveler themselves reporting ”I’ve now decided on these specific connections”, right? I assume this isn’t even solved today within a single ticket..?
Reporting only fixed plans might be enough to know when to hold a train anyway, and either way you’ll never completely remove the need for travelers simply talking to the train crew in all cases.
@jon
Oliver Blanthorn
in reply to Stefan Lindbohm • • •@stefanlindbohm i agree that it would be nice to have
my problem is that the railways are trying to use it as excuse to restrict passenger rights for the people taking the most complicated journeys (and therefore the ones who need the rights the most)
@jon
Jon Worth
in reply to Oliver Blanthorn • • •Stefan Lindbohm
in reply to Jon Worth • • •@bovine3dom As it stands currently, I’m not aware of any technical standard that allows a reseller to communicate a link between two tickets issued by separare systems. Rail operator or not. The old systems assume through tickets issued by the selling railway and the new standard is OSDM which does not have this AFAIK.
I would imagine it being not insurmountable though. OSDM could have parameters introduced to receive connecting carrier + train number or something as a minimum.
Major Denis Bloodnok
in reply to Jon Worth • • •Patrick Dersjant RCX
in reply to Jon Worth • • •Cycling on Rails
in reply to Jon Worth • • •"Obliging railway operators to sell a single through ticket to anywhere is too complicated and should not be attempted, as this places too heavy a burden on the IT infrastructure of railway companies."
Ah come on, of all things railways, ticketing IT infra is probably the least rocket science (I'm sure @bovine3dom concurs). Back of the envelope calculation SNCF sells on average 10 TGV tickets per second. Not nearly close to signaling, getting a train to roll safely at railway speeds, etc.
Jon Worth
in reply to Cycling on Rails • • •Cycling on Rails
in reply to Jon Worth • • •I don't have first hand experience as I (seamlessly) used Renfe and ÖBB for (cross-border) trips there 🙃 Although I thought there must be something fishy when I saw long lines at the ticket desk in Porto. Suburban trains around Porto worked well at the ticket machines, can't tell about online (but in any case not fundamentally different than a RER ticket in Paris).
My point still stands that if their ticketing is bad it was a business decision not to invest enough in digitalisation.
Cycling on Rails
in reply to Cycling on Rails • • •Cycling on Rails
in reply to Cycling on Rails • • •Cycling on Rails
in reply to Cycling on Rails • • •I however agree with the premise of not obliging companies to sell through tickets to anywhere, because it would e.g. entail forcing DB to sell tickets for Flixtrain. But the reason is you can't force a company to sell competitors' products, not that it's too complicated to do.
What we should aim for is forcing companies to open their schedule/pricing/availability data to any reseller (and to anyone really), and let 3rd-parties figure out the packaging.
abeorch likes this.
Jon Worth
in reply to Cycling on Rails • • •Cycling on Rails
in reply to Jon Worth • • •I'll believe it when I see it! 🙃 For now ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-r… only mentions "improving" and "increasing transparency". The crux is: by how much?
The day SNCF provides an open API to poll availability and prices for all TGVs in the next 3 months every few minutes, we'll have full transparency that allows building truly innovative 3rd-party resellers. Until then, 3rd-parties are stuck finding nice routes but realize tickets are sold out when the user clicks at the last step.
European Commission - Have your say
European Commission - Have your sayabeorch
in reply to Cycling on Rails • •abeorch
Unknown parent • •Yes.. but customers arent always loving it. They are discovering the hard way that that cheap ticket comes at a cost.
Sometimes people go into.it informed - other times completely without realising it.
Often these offers are made with #selftransfer 'guarantees' by the agent that arent all people expect.
You are right trains use the term #splitticket - I am not sure which is more 'correct'
They are part of a few sharp practices by #otas including things like tickey arbitrage (where they sell a 'ticket' at one price but dont actually hedge their exposure by actually buying it immediately but waiting amd hoping they can wait and buy it.later cheaper.
An open reseller market has some drawbacks bit I think overall the airline industry incl. #iata has been much more innovative having designed #gds systems that cover air, train and other travel methods as well as car rental and accomodation.
Tor Lillqvist likes this.
abeorch
in reply to Jon Worth • •Jon Worth
in reply to abeorch • • •