8 ms·

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

95 points by Trombone12 5y ago

mlok 5y ago
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/ https://direkt.bahn.guru/ (provided by Deutsche Bahn but not limited to their own trains)
- fignews 5y ago
  This is so great, thanks for sharing. I’ve found some really amazing routes.
Proven 5y ago
Sounds like a rhetorical question meant to boost support for wasteful EU-approved "investment" ie centrally blessed handouts for more debt and government spending that continues to violate eurozone deficit rules from the 90's. How about some practical problems for these euro-geniuses such as why is gasoline and energy in general so ridiculously expensive? An entire generation has lived a miserable life because of the EU, it's like a 21st century version of Soviet Union.
1cvmask 5y ago
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 streamlining would outweigh the revenue increase. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to create a disruptor in the train space due to rules, regulation and the capex nature of it. Whereas the airline space is easy to enter as a competitor even though it is capex heavy because the core asset (planes) are mobile. You can move them from very competitive market to another one that has less competition if the laws (and airport slots) allow for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contestable_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contestable_market
- bullen 5y ago
  This and the kerosene is tax free, which is impossible to compete with.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    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.
- batushka3 5y ago
  Also revenue comes from freight, passenger transport is just a subsidised public service.
  - markus92 5y ago
    Really depends on the individual countries. Some countries subsidize the tracks for everyone (including freight), others just the passenger rail companies. Heck, in the EU there's even quite a few open-access operators who are fully for-profit.
  - nraynaud 5y ago
    knowing the cost of a bullet train railway, and the fact that freight trains don't use them, I'm skeptical, as far as I know, it's tax money and debt that "pays" for it.
- jcfrei 5y ago
  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 it's fairly obvious that there are no incentives to make cross country traveling more attractive. Politicians decide about the rail services and they are only interested in the opinions of their constituents. More crowded trains due to tourists might as well hurt their popularity. It's a broken system in certain ways.
raverbashing 5y ago
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.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  They even mention Trainline in the article, which spits me a next-day ticket from for both those trips in seconds. They hand wave it away by saying the are "unknown to consumers".
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Those services are great. I used Eurail (a similar one). Bought X train trips for a flat rate, all I had to do was write in my To and From cities on the travel log. Reading this article, I took that for granted with how simple it was.
    - iggldiggl 5y ago
      Eurail is only for non-European residents, tough. Europeans have to use Interrail, which in turn doesn't cover journeys in your home country (except two single trips if you buy the more expensive all-of-Europe Global pass). If you want to do a holiday-by-train (and especially if you also plan on doing a few additional journeys while abroad, like a few day trips or staying a few days in one place, then moving on to somewhere different etc.) it can still be worth it, but for a simple back-and-forth journey this means that Interrail passes still aren't necessarily a suitable replacement for true through-ticketing. (Also some countries require mandatory reservations for long-distance trains which in turn aren't necessarily included in the price of an Eurail/Interrail pass)
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    > They hand wave it away by saying the are "unknown to consumers". There's also the fact (also mentioned in the article) that buying split tickets (which is what those kind of agencies will sell you if the respective operators don't offer through-tickets) won't give you the full protection of the passengers rights in case of delays, missed connections, etc.
lqet 5y ago
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 enough, bahn.de (the journey planer of Deutsche Bahn) offered us a ticket for a train ride of around 16 hours from our home town to Zagreb, through Austria and Slovenia. We would have had to change trains 2 times. > Then things escalated. > We discovered that we could book the same trip, for the same price, but with a different route, making a 500 km detour inside Germany over my parent's town. Then we discovered that bahn.de allowed us to specify a minimum time to change trains. We set it to 24 hours at my parent's town, letting us stay at my parents for a night. Then we found out that we could set an additional via option in such a way that we had to change trains in Ljubljana. We set the minimum time to change trains there to 24 hours. Then we found out that the ticket price was the same if we travelled not only to Zagreb, but to Split (at the coast), which required a change of trains in Zagreb. But we wanted to stay a few days in Zagreb, and the maximum minimum time to change trains on bahn.de was 24 hours. But thenw e discovered that (at least 5 years ago) all foreign tickets were valid for 30 days in Croatia. Effectively, this meant that we could stay in Zagreb for 30 days, and our ticket to Split was still valid. > We got the ticket. After a week of visiting my parents (1 night stay), Ljubljana (1 night stay), and Zagreb (5 nights stay), we arrived in Split without problems. It was a 1,500 km, 7 day train trip for 39 EUR. > The only minor problem we had was the German conductor in the first train after we visited my parents. He just stared at the monstrous ticket in disbelief and had to finally conclude that it was valid. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982370
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  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 figure out economically frugal routes. Having to have an argument with a conductor isn't my idea of leisurely travel either. I could manage in Germany, but I once had an Italian train conductor who didn't understand the (valid and very popular) Interrail tickets we had and just got annoyed. She gave up thankfully and move on in a huff.
atomflunder 5y ago
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.
- soco 5y ago
  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.
reacharavindh 5y ago
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 co-operate and make these systems inter-operate so that for example, one can have a Danish Rejsekort, and travel to Netherlands by train, and go around the town in public transport using the same "beep beep". Now, make that acceptable in long distance trains as well, and imagine how convenient that would be!! EU can clearly make a nice case for this because it will improve efficiency and usage (thereby netting profit) for member countries. There needs to be leadership and will to make it happen!!!
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  These cards are useful for commuting and local transport (OV-Chipkaart, by the way), but when travelling for leisure you do miss out on useful deals that way. In the summer season there are lots of discounts to be had on the Dutch train network, with savings up to 80% of the regular price depending on destination and availability of special discounts. For international travel planning and booking ahead of time usually means you can get very large discounts as well that would not be possible with a check-in-whenever-you-travel type of card.
- soco 5y ago
  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.
tristor 5y ago
I didn't find riding the train around Europe to be complex, if anything it was a bit more straightforward than air travel in the US domestically because I didn't have to go through absurd security theater as part of the process. I have done many many cross-country train trips in Europe without issue.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
You think that's bad? Spanish train operator Renfe's website [0] (which has been "redesigned" time and time again to much fanfare over the years) is incapable of offering tickets for any journey between two stations if there's no direct train between them, unless a specific option changing trains has been manually defined on their system. Neither will it display commuter train services, even though stations served by commuter trains do appear in the drop-down. [0]: https://www.renfe.com/es/en https://www.renfe.com/es/en
markvdb 5y ago
Try booking a train ticket from Brussels to Riga. Still quite a bit of work to do...
someonewhocar3s 5y ago
Most of the time, you buy fewer than one ticket per leg. Often the interfaces or forms are more fancy or extensive; perhaps implying security. Hindsight /km payment for international travel would not readily take your mind off of distances beyond the travel time; you'd never know how much to pay. Every international card has recognition issues in some countries/places, or limited ticket stations serve special deals. Countries probably vary in their use of smartcard gates etc further complicating such deals. I was wondering about train pricing and train pricing ideals. There's a large factor of involvement of the cost of finance, as they're expensive projects. The market-technical pricepoint relates to alternative modes of travel, but the nature of mobility does not. This relates to hyperloop etc. It would be neat to have fast-train New York - London/Paris/Amsterdam - (... more stops, have skip-trains ...) Bejing - Seoul/Busan - Tokyo, maybe Australia would even pay to have one next to a brand new city in the northeast of the country.. But the scale implies enough industry to have issues being expressed in regular currencies - and it should have fargoing implications to live so proximate; in one of the world-cities. But how many people would you expect to make the journey? And whatfor? Is the economy of it the leading choice, or is prestige a factor? What is the balance of advantages at different price-points, or at different expectations of traffic volume. It might be added value for tickets to be ~20 euro's (cheaper even per hour than 'typical' train fair, probably impossible without large volume and subsidy), instead of the 'serious hassle' <300 that a "regular international intercity" tends to go for. In fairness to potential comfort, fares could be 2000 euro's, but this would greatly reduce the potential volume and application range. Another question could be, why are countries ran 'retroactively' nowadays? I'd rather the news stated there was debates about future trains, proactive regulation of automation and small electric vehicles, something to tie science like a horse for improvement, rather than to consider (promoting) improvements indirectly; through a market.
quentindel 5y ago
https://www.interrail.eu/ https://www.interrail.eu/ is providing good bundles to travel across Europe. Plus, there is a black friday promo ongoing.
bullen 5y ago
Cross-country used to be very convenient before kerosene production increased, got distributed and aeroplanes range increased so that taxation of the fuel became impossible. You could book one nighttrain ticket from Stockholm to Paris straight and that had been possible since 1930 until ~1970! Now when the Swedish governement tries to revive the service they say they encounter resistance from the Germans who apparently don't want to let traffic just cross their territory for some reason? Political blame game? "In this case, one of the objections has been that the final destination of the traffic is not German. There are similar challenges with other countries. But if we are to have train traffic in the EU, we must accept and let traffic through, says Minister of Infrastructure Tomas Eneroth" https://www.dn.se/sverige/tyskland-stoppade-svensk-nattag-till-bryssel-ministrar-skriver-till-eu/ https://www.dn.se/sverige/tyskland-stoppade-svensk-nattag-ti... Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_Wagons-Lits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_W...
- ant6n 5y ago
  Oy, swedish link behind paywall...
  - bullen 5y ago
    View source, then remove hidden tag... works sometimes... I translated the only content worth reading.
Stranger43 5y ago
The trick to get an flexible affordable ticket between European cities is to know that interrail tickets(https://www.interrail.eu 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 waiting at airports, which still required muiti-hour train journeys to the final destination, and i really did enjoy that mode of transport, but it does take some mental adjustments as delays are pretty common on the railways so if you have a "must meet" every connection as scheduled schedule where you cannot just jump on the next train out things will get messy.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  This is incredible, how is it that I have never heard of this service?
  - Trombone12 5y ago
    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?
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      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.
janandonly 5y ago
There are some very useful hyperlinks in this article to website that negate some of the hassle of booking cross-border tickers
vondur 5y ago
Wow, I assumed that the EU was created to simplify things like this. Still better than Amtrak I suppose.
noplay 5y ago
If you are interrested by this problem Trainline is hiring and my team is working on connecting the Train carrier API to a single backend like what you have in the airline world. https://jobs.lever.co/thetrainline/9743f1ec-253f-46ec-a144-189158af3639 https://jobs.lever.co/thetrainline/9743f1ec-253f-46ec-a144-1...
Angostura 5y ago
Just in case people haven't come across the excellent https://www.seat61.com https://www.seat61.com It is indispensible if you want to plan international travel by train. A true work of love.
johncoltrane 5y ago
And somehow I'm able to buy a return ticket from Paris to Prague on my national railways' website without a single issue.

95 points by Trombone12 5y ago

mlok 5y ago

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/ https://direkt.bahn.guru/ (provided by Deutsche Bahn but not limited to their own trains)

fignews 5y ago
This is so great, thanks for sharing. I’ve found some really amazing routes.

Proven 5y ago

Sounds like a rhetorical question meant to boost support for wasteful EU-approved "investment" ie centrally blessed handouts for more debt and government spending that continues to violate eurozone deficit rules from the 90's. How about some practical problems for these euro-geniuses such as why is gasoline and energy in general so ridiculously expensive? An entire generation has lived a miserable life because of the EU, it's like a 21st century version of Soviet Union.

1cvmask 5y ago

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 streamlining would outweigh the revenue increase. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to create a disruptor in the train space due to rules, regulation and the capex nature of it. Whereas the airline space is easy to enter as a competitor even though it is capex heavy because the core asset (planes) are mobile. You can move them from very competitive market to another one that has less competition if the laws (and airport slots) allow for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contestable_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contestable_market

bullen 5y ago
This and the kerosene is tax free, which is impossible to compete with.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  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.
batushka3 5y ago
Also revenue comes from freight, passenger transport is just a subsidised public service.
- markus92 5y ago
  Really depends on the individual countries. Some countries subsidize the tracks for everyone (including freight), others just the passenger rail companies. Heck, in the EU there's even quite a few open-access operators who are fully for-profit.
- nraynaud 5y ago
  knowing the cost of a bullet train railway, and the fact that freight trains don't use them, I'm skeptical, as far as I know, it's tax money and debt that "pays" for it.
jcfrei 5y ago
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 it's fairly obvious that there are no incentives to make cross country traveling more attractive. Politicians decide about the rail services and they are only interested in the opinions of their constituents. More crowded trains due to tourists might as well hurt their popularity. It's a broken system in certain ways.

raverbashing 5y ago

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.

yoz-y 5y ago
They even mention Trainline in the article, which spits me a next-day ticket from for both those trips in seconds. They hand wave it away by saying the are "unknown to consumers".
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Those services are great. I used Eurail (a similar one). Bought X train trips for a flat rate, all I had to do was write in my To and From cities on the travel log. Reading this article, I took that for granted with how simple it was.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    Eurail is only for non-European residents, tough. Europeans have to use Interrail, which in turn doesn't cover journeys in your home country (except two single trips if you buy the more expensive all-of-Europe Global pass). If you want to do a holiday-by-train (and especially if you also plan on doing a few additional journeys while abroad, like a few day trips or staying a few days in one place, then moving on to somewhere different etc.) it can still be worth it, but for a simple back-and-forth journey this means that Interrail passes still aren't necessarily a suitable replacement for true through-ticketing. (Also some countries require mandatory reservations for long-distance trains which in turn aren't necessarily included in the price of an Eurail/Interrail pass)
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  > They hand wave it away by saying the are "unknown to consumers". There's also the fact (also mentioned in the article) that buying split tickets (which is what those kind of agencies will sell you if the respective operators don't offer through-tickets) won't give you the full protection of the passengers rights in case of delays, missed connections, etc.

lqet 5y ago

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 enough, bahn.de (the journey planer of Deutsche Bahn) offered us a ticket for a train ride of around 16 hours from our home town to Zagreb, through Austria and Slovenia. We would have had to change trains 2 times. > Then things escalated. > We discovered that we could book the same trip, for the same price, but with a different route, making a 500 km detour inside Germany over my parent's town. Then we discovered that bahn.de allowed us to specify a minimum time to change trains. We set it to 24 hours at my parent's town, letting us stay at my parents for a night. Then we found out that we could set an additional via option in such a way that we had to change trains in Ljubljana. We set the minimum time to change trains there to 24 hours. Then we found out that the ticket price was the same if we travelled not only to Zagreb, but to Split (at the coast), which required a change of trains in Zagreb. But we wanted to stay a few days in Zagreb, and the maximum minimum time to change trains on bahn.de was 24 hours. But thenw e discovered that (at least 5 years ago) all foreign tickets were valid for 30 days in Croatia. Effectively, this meant that we could stay in Zagreb for 30 days, and our ticket to Split was still valid. > We got the ticket. After a week of visiting my parents (1 night stay), Ljubljana (1 night stay), and Zagreb (5 nights stay), we arrived in Split without problems. It was a 1,500 km, 7 day train trip for 39 EUR. > The only minor problem we had was the German conductor in the first train after we visited my parents. He just stared at the monstrous ticket in disbelief and had to finally conclude that it was valid. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982370

Freak_NL 5y ago
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 figure out economically frugal routes. Having to have an argument with a conductor isn't my idea of leisurely travel either. I could manage in Germany, but I once had an Italian train conductor who didn't understand the (valid and very popular) Interrail tickets we had and just got annoyed. She gave up thankfully and move on in a huff.

atomflunder 5y ago

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.

soco 5y ago
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.

reacharavindh 5y ago

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 co-operate and make these systems inter-operate so that for example, one can have a Danish Rejsekort, and travel to Netherlands by train, and go around the town in public transport using the same "beep beep". Now, make that acceptable in long distance trains as well, and imagine how convenient that would be!! EU can clearly make a nice case for this because it will improve efficiency and usage (thereby netting profit) for member countries. There needs to be leadership and will to make it happen!!!

Freak_NL 5y ago
These cards are useful for commuting and local transport (OV-Chipkaart, by the way), but when travelling for leisure you do miss out on useful deals that way. In the summer season there are lots of discounts to be had on the Dutch train network, with savings up to 80% of the regular price depending on destination and availability of special discounts. For international travel planning and booking ahead of time usually means you can get very large discounts as well that would not be possible with a check-in-whenever-you-travel type of card.
soco 5y ago
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.

tristor 5y ago

I didn't find riding the train around Europe to be complex, if anything it was a bit more straightforward than air travel in the US domestically because I didn't have to go through absurd security theater as part of the process. I have done many many cross-country train trips in Europe without issue.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

You think that's bad? Spanish train operator Renfe's website [0] (which has been "redesigned" time and time again to much fanfare over the years) is incapable of offering tickets for any journey between two stations if there's no direct train between them, unless a specific option changing trains has been manually defined on their system. Neither will it display commuter train services, even though stations served by commuter trains do appear in the drop-down. [0]: https://www.renfe.com/es/en https://www.renfe.com/es/en

markvdb 5y ago

Try booking a train ticket from Brussels to Riga. Still quite a bit of work to do...

someonewhocar3s 5y ago

Most of the time, you buy fewer than one ticket per leg. Often the interfaces or forms are more fancy or extensive; perhaps implying security. Hindsight /km payment for international travel would not readily take your mind off of distances beyond the travel time; you'd never know how much to pay. Every international card has recognition issues in some countries/places, or limited ticket stations serve special deals. Countries probably vary in their use of smartcard gates etc further complicating such deals. I was wondering about train pricing and train pricing ideals. There's a large factor of involvement of the cost of finance, as they're expensive projects. The market-technical pricepoint relates to alternative modes of travel, but the nature of mobility does not. This relates to hyperloop etc. It would be neat to have fast-train New York - London/Paris/Amsterdam - (... more stops, have skip-trains ...) Bejing - Seoul/Busan - Tokyo, maybe Australia would even pay to have one next to a brand new city in the northeast of the country.. But the scale implies enough industry to have issues being expressed in regular currencies - and it should have fargoing implications to live so proximate; in one of the world-cities. But how many people would you expect to make the journey? And whatfor? Is the economy of it the leading choice, or is prestige a factor? What is the balance of advantages at different price-points, or at different expectations of traffic volume. It might be added value for tickets to be ~20 euro's (cheaper even per hour than 'typical' train fair, probably impossible without large volume and subsidy), instead of the 'serious hassle' <300 that a "regular international intercity" tends to go for. In fairness to potential comfort, fares could be 2000 euro's, but this would greatly reduce the potential volume and application range. Another question could be, why are countries ran 'retroactively' nowadays? I'd rather the news stated there was debates about future trains, proactive regulation of automation and small electric vehicles, something to tie science like a horse for improvement, rather than to consider (promoting) improvements indirectly; through a market.

quentindel 5y ago

https://www.interrail.eu/ https://www.interrail.eu/ is providing good bundles to travel across Europe. Plus, there is a black friday promo ongoing.

bullen 5y ago

Cross-country used to be very convenient before kerosene production increased, got distributed and aeroplanes range increased so that taxation of the fuel became impossible. You could book one nighttrain ticket from Stockholm to Paris straight and that had been possible since 1930 until ~1970! Now when the Swedish governement tries to revive the service they say they encounter resistance from the Germans who apparently don't want to let traffic just cross their territory for some reason? Political blame game? "In this case, one of the objections has been that the final destination of the traffic is not German. There are similar challenges with other countries. But if we are to have train traffic in the EU, we must accept and let traffic through, says Minister of Infrastructure Tomas Eneroth" https://www.dn.se/sverige/tyskland-stoppade-svensk-nattag-till-bryssel-ministrar-skriver-till-eu/ https://www.dn.se/sverige/tyskland-stoppade-svensk-nattag-ti... Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_Wagons-Lits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_W...

ant6n 5y ago
Oy, swedish link behind paywall...
- bullen 5y ago
  View source, then remove hidden tag... works sometimes... I translated the only content worth reading.

Stranger43 5y ago

The trick to get an flexible affordable ticket between European cities is to know that interrail tickets(https://www.interrail.eu 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 waiting at airports, which still required muiti-hour train journeys to the final destination, and i really did enjoy that mode of transport, but it does take some mental adjustments as delays are pretty common on the railways so if you have a "must meet" every connection as scheduled schedule where you cannot just jump on the next train out things will get messy.

tinus_hn 5y ago
This is incredible, how is it that I have never heard of this service?
- Trombone12 5y ago
  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?
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    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.

janandonly 5y ago

There are some very useful hyperlinks in this article to website that negate some of the hassle of booking cross-border tickers

vondur 5y ago

Wow, I assumed that the EU was created to simplify things like this. Still better than Amtrak I suppose.

noplay 5y ago

If you are interrested by this problem Trainline is hiring and my team is working on connecting the Train carrier API to a single backend like what you have in the airline world. https://jobs.lever.co/thetrainline/9743f1ec-253f-46ec-a144-189158af3639 https://jobs.lever.co/thetrainline/9743f1ec-253f-46ec-a144-1...

Angostura 5y ago

Just in case people haven't come across the excellent https://www.seat61.com https://www.seat61.com It is indispensible if you want to plan international travel by train. A true work of love.

johncoltrane 5y ago

And somehow I'm able to buy a return ticket from Paris to Prague on my national railways' website without a single issue.