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Germany and France in talks about shared railway tickets (www.sueddeutsche.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Sorry for the German source, I couldn't find an English one.

Apparently, there are first talks between the German and French traffic ministers to expand the national railway tickets (49€ ticket on the German side, a soon-to-be equivalent in France) in the respecting neighbour country. It's still a more than early stage, will take several years and will have to overcome the incompetency of Wissing, but the idea is intriguing.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not german or french, but I think this is a great first step to get cheap rail travel throughout europe. I'm really hoping more countries will follow germany's lead on the cheap ticket price and being able to use this in other countries is really important too.

Another important thing we have to do though is have a unified booking system which lets anyone from any EU country book their tickets and use an app their familiar with. It'd be awesome for me in Sweden to be able to easily book train tickets to Spain with the ease it is to book a flight down to Spain. Currently it's hard to find out which routes are available and from those routes, booking through different operators which have different policies and different ticketing mechanisms or apps.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think the way to do this is to have an open API for booking trains, like planes do. That's how Expedia, Google Flights, ITA matrix, etc work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system

Apparently there is some progress in Sweden about this: https://www.railtech.com/all/2022/11/14/what-can-countries-learn-from-sweden-when-it-comes-to-multi-modal-ticketing/?gdpr=accept

But I think there will probably have to be some sort of EU regulation to get this to happen EU-wide any time soon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately only for people between 18 and 27 and only for a limited time to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Élysée treaty. One (cheap) ticket for all of Europe would be a dream.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I believe these are two different stories. The Elysee jubilee tickets are already on their way. The idea reported by SZ is to further collobarate down the line once France has introduced their equivalent nation-wide ticket.

It's no way substantial, but if it happens, it could be a prototype for a better EU railway and ticket system, which is desperately needed imo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh that's even better. Internal tickets are a good thing for vacation/"rail trip" if you're <28 but still too expensive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There should be a app that work a cross all of the EU, for taking the train. The app should give you discounts and specific destinations across Europe should have special discounts, so people can travel Europe for cheap. That’s also one way to keep people from flying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That would really be a dream come true. Went from Frankfurt to Rome by train last year and it actually worked like charm but it would have been nice to book it all in one portal instead of booking at DB for the first part till Basel and then booking the rest of trip, Basel - Milano - Rome, on Trenitalia. Would have provided me with some peace of mind to know that even if the first train is late in Basel I will be able to just take the next train and won't have to argue with some Swiss railroad guys about whether or not I'm on a single journey and missed a connecting train or if I booked to separate journeys. The later would mean that if I had missed the connecting train in Basel I would have to buy new tickets were being on a single journey means that by some (already really good) EU regulation I would have been able to take the next train southwards.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i am fan of ATC (air traffic control) online radio broadcast. it would be interesting to have online RTC broadcast. train networks and radio transmissions are kinda mysterious and still not that public-friendly

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