One out of three flight itineraries within Europe can also be done by train in less than six hours. Still millions of Europeans prefer to fly. This is mainly because the fantastic European public transport systems are all just a few stops short of being interconnected. And because it is incredibly complicated to plan, book and pay for an international train journey. In the past year, I investigated the issues people encounter when wanting to travel through Europe by train – and found out how we can simplify things.
Imagine this scenario: I’m a PSV supporter living in Roermond. After years of misery on the field, my club is finally back in the Champions League. They kick off against Arsenal in London, on a Wednesday evening at 8:45 pm. I moved heaven and hell to get tickets for my son and me, and now I have to figure out how to get there. What do I do? The easiest would be to drive to Düsseldorf or Eindhoven and then fly to London using Ryan Air. But: I have decided I don’t want to use planes anymore when travelling short distances, I want a greener alternative. So I will take the train this time. This is the type of scenario I have been playing with for hours on end in the past year. What kind of problems do people encounter? The result was even more absurd than I had already feared.
The hell of planning, booking and paying
The first step is to plan the journey. I tried Google as well as the travel apps of Omio and NS International. Omio indicates that I would be best flying over. That would take me from Eindhoven to London within an hour (but note: this does not include the thirty minutes travel to get to Eindhoven, the two hours needed for check-in, customs and luggage, another hour for customs and luggage plus an hour on the train to get to the city centre). Google and NS International do provide an option to go by train. This involves travelling north (!) first to Rotterdam, to then take the Thalys to Brussels and then transfer to the Eurostar to get to London. A journey of approximately six hours. You can see the itinerary in the image.
One would think there is a smarter way to do this; by car I would drive to Brussels via Maastricht, so I am going to try to do the same by train.
And that is the point at which I am really baffled: First I have to take the train from Roermond to Maastricht, using my OVchipkaart. Then I have to get off the train to check out with my chipkaart and buy a separate ticket to Liège, or use the app of the Belgian railways NMBS to buy a ticket. Once I have purchased that ticket, I am stood waiting for the stopping train between Maastricht and Liège, which passes once an hour and makes four stops on the way. And for the stretch between Liège and Brussels, I only have three options: one train in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. None of them offer a proper connection to the first part of my journey. Now, because I spend more time looking into mobility issues than the average person, I know it can’t be right that there are only three options here. Because every hour, there are four intercity trains travelling between Liège and Brussels. Our PSV supporter would probably have given up by now, but I won’t!
When I have another look at the NMBS app I find the intercity trains which I was unable to find in the international planning apps. So I take one of them to travel to Brussels. Once on the train, I have a look at my ticket (the third one since I left home) and get a scare: is the final destination of this train Bruxelles-South, or should I have gone to Bruxelles-Midi station?
Much to my relief, they turn out to be one and the same and I will be able to catch the Eurostar from that station shortly. A few minutes later, I hear the voice of the train guard over the Tannoy: we’re delayed. So I call Eurostar to ask if it is possible to take a later train than the one I booked, but they tell me that unfortunately, that is not possible. Eurostar is not responsible for any delays on the NMBS system, so the problem is mine, not theirs. I have no choice but to fork out € 184 for a new Eurostar ticket. When I board my last train at 6.56 pm (six hours after I left Roermond), it takes me to London within the hour without any problems.
The three major issues of international train travel
Does this example sound like a dystopia? Or a scenario that just happens to fit this article? Then I suggest you try it yourself once. In the past few months, I spent a lot of time planning and making tens of different train journeys within Europe. From Bordeaux to Barcelona, from Zwolle to Düsseldorf, from Turin to Lyon, from Basle to Brussels, to name just a few. Sometimes, everything goes smoothly. But I also found three recurring problems.
- Traveling from capital to capital is easy. Using any other start or end point almost always means trouble
It is not a coincidence that the stretch Brussels-London was the easiest part of my journey from Roermond to London. Because travelling between capitals hardly ever poses issues. The majority of the problems arise when your starting point is not a capital. Amsterdam to London is a piece of cake with a direct train that only takes 4 hours – Roermond to London much less so.Generally speaking, this makes sense. The strategy of international train travel is focused on fast main lines. From one area with many people to another area with many people, without too many stops on the way, as you are competing with a plane.
But because all the focus in on the above, you get absurd situations. If for example you want to get from Heino in the Dutch province of Overijssel to Düsseldorf in Germany, you currently have to take the Arriva train to Zwolle, than catch a train from Zwolle to Arnhem to then wait for an international train that only passes four times a day. We see a similar thing when travelling between Bordeaux and Bilbao, or between Toulouse and Barcelona, and many other European border crossings. There is undoubtedly a smarter way (carry on reading to find out how), and enabling this is imperative, as most Europeans do not live near or in a capital.
- The apps of public transport companies such as NS, DB, Trenitalia and others mainly promote their own network If you use the apps of the public transport companies when planning your journey, you only get to see a very limited selection of what is on offer. I found a clear example of this when planning my journey back home to Zandvoort after a work trip to Milan. By way of an experiment, I had purposefully not booked my journey in advance, which very much displeased my travel companion Gerson, who saw the ticket prices increase by the day.When we tried to plan our journey on Friday morning, the apps showed us that all travel options between Paris and Amsterdam were sold out. How was that possible, given that there are TGV trains every hour between Paris and Lille (taking 1 hour), between Lille and Brussels (taking 2 hours) and Brussels and Amsterdam (taking 3 hours)? But the apps of Trenitalia, NS, Thalys and Omio did not show us those options. It was only when using the SNCF app that I stumbled upon a beautiful train network, which obviously does exist. This app showed me that we could also travel via Disneyland Paris, which was a much more attractive option as it means avoiding the infamous transfer at Paris-Nord station. And that was a real bonus for my travel companion Gerson, who has trouble walking.So in the end, there was a way. But in order to find it, we had to think of the options ourselves and know exactly which app to use or be crazy enough to just try them all.The train companies are state-owned and mainly focused on their own market, which is something the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) has also pointed out in its report Verzet de Wissel (Change the switch). They try to protect that market, which results in travelers not being given all the options, while they do exist. Examples are the French and Czech railway companies who only offer the cheapest rates on their own websites. And some public transport companies, such as the Hungarian railways, do not work with foreign booking sites at all.
- As soon as you have to change between trains of different providers, you’re in trouble (and you, the traveler, don’t have many rights) Protecting your own market equals a lack of cooperation, which in turn means that the traveler soon becomes the victim. While it only takes a few clicks to book a flight ticket between Milan and Amsterdam on Skyscanner, I had to buy my train tickets through Trenitalia, SNCF, ROR and NS. Each with their own booking system, terms and conditions and rates. It means you can’t just buy your ticket for the journey in one go, which causes problems in case of delays. If one of the providers is delayed, the other will not just let you take the next train.
Short video, where I show the potential of connecting existing train networks
Why is that a problem?
It is mainly a problem because it doesn’t have to be that way. Most European countries are served by an incredible network of intercity trains. Rails are in place and the capacity is there. So we have all the ingredients to give 550 million Europeans the chance to move through Europe in a much greener way. All it takes is giving everyone access to a European train network, which would enable people to reach their holiday or work destination abroad with just two or three simple transfers. It avoids having to queue for hours at the airport, and while on the train you can do some work, enjoy the passing scenery, play games, meet people in the on-board bar, not to mention the fact that you get off in the middle of town. That’s how good it could be.
But currently, more than a million people per year travel by plane to get from Paris to Frankfurt and back, and more than two million people do the same for the stretch MadridBarcelona. A quarter of the European CO2 emissions from aviation come from flights of less than 1500 kilometers long. If those figures stay like that, we will never achieve the climate goals. Especially when you bear in mind that there are currently a lot of Europeans who are not travelling by plane because they cannot afford to.
In a social Europe, mobility should not just be for the elite. But at the same time, we want flight traffic to decrease instead of increase. So we have to start doing things differently and the train plays an important part in this. There is an alternative by train for 34% of the busiest flight itineraries in Europe, with a travel time of less than six hours. And if you calculate the costs from door to door, travelling by train is often not more expensive than flying. The most important thing we need to do, is make things easier for the traveler, much easier. And that is feasible, without having to invest billions in new railway lines.
The most important changes do not cost billions
Connecting existing networks: carry on until the next hub
It was my biggest frustration during my trip from Roermond to London: the fact that the NS train stops at Maastricht, rather than in Liège, for example. If that train would just carry on for another half an hour, it would take the travelers straight to an international hub, from where they can continue to Paris, Frankfurt, London or Berlin. But instead I had to stand on a cold platform and wait for a stopping train. The point I am making here became crystal clear to me when I came across an Interrail map while doing my research. This map shows the network of trains that remains so craftily hidden when you try to book your journey via all the different apps. This map shows the magical world of possibilities that would emerge if we would connect the existing train networks just that little bit better, by extending them to just across the border. A world in which even people who do not live in a capital would be able to easily reach the next hub, from where they can get to their destination quickly and without any trouble.
Simplify the planning, booking and paying process
At the same time, it should become possible to plan, book and pay for your European train journey with the use of just one app, which shows all options. Arriën Kruyt, member of the European Passenger Federation, makes it painfully clear why this process is currently so difficult.
It’s because there is already a system that makes it possible to show all available options and compare them. It’s called Amadeus, the system that is being used by websites like Booking.com or comparison websites for mortgages or flights. This same system was offered to all railway companies years ago, but the negotiations are still ongoing. The parties can’t come to a consensus, mainly because all providers want to promote their own trains and not those of the competition.
In my opinion, there is only one way to break free from this situation: European laws and regulations. While I am finishing this essay, I come across a promising interview with Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission. He says that European railway companies have until the end of the year to come up with a joint ticketing system. “If they don’t, then we will legally impose it,” says Timmermans.
That is exactly what we need, but I’m not holding my breath. After having spoken to more than twenty prominent experts on international train travel, ticketing and Mobility as a Service (MaaS), I have concluded that there is no lack of good intentions at the European Commission. It’s just that so far, there has not been enough urgency and knowledge to break through the lobby of the state-owned companies. European Parliament has already tried to improve the poor passenger rights in case of delays, but the regulations were toned down in the European Council after a strong lobby by the railway companies.
I think we cannot afford to let that happen. On a yearly basis, there are 144,220 airplanes that fly to and from Schiphol Airport for flights of less than 500 kilometers. More than a million people per year travel by plane between Paris and Frankfurt and more than two million between Rome and Paris. How is it possible that we can agree on using the same currency, but we can’t manage to make train travel more attractive by just creating one good booking system?
Let’s reserve one of the billions that we invest in rails for that. Oblige all providers to share their data, sell tickets of other providers and take over from one another in case of delays. I am convinced that those regulations and that this one billion will have just as much impact on European train traffic, as all the other billions.
Whether you’re from Greece, Germany, Belgium or Lithuania, everyone should have the opportunity to travel through Europe in a decent and sustainable way. To plan their journey and use the same ticket to open all the gates. With a simple system which everyone understands. No worries, no stress and a much nicer travel experience than they would have had when travelling by plane.
And all that without a drop of kerosene.
By: Geert Kloppenburg