BUYING a cross-border rail ticket in Europe remains frustratingly difficult for too many people. Countless stories of a lack of visibility of all service options, overly expensive tickets, and a failure to honour passenger rights during disrupted journeys are together conspiring to damage rail’s appeal and limit modal shift to rail.

A recent survey conducted by lobby group Transport & Environment found that around two-thirds of participants admitted to giving up on making a long-distance journey by rail because they found it too difficult to buy a ticket, a worrying trend. Personal experience of these difficulties was aired in plenty during a ticketing debate hosted by the Association of New Rail Entrants (AllRail) at the European Parliament in November. The issue is timely as the European Commission (EC) prepares new legislation as part of a wider ticketing package.

Both the Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation (SDBTR) and the Multimodal Digital Mobility Services Regulation (MDMS) are expected to propose improvements to how rail tickets are sold and distributed throughout the European Union (EU). Kathrin Obst, deputy head of the Single European Railway Area Unit at DG Move at the EC, says the EC is aiming for SDBTR specifically to address three primary questions:

  • with some state-owned railways possessing a near monopoly on ticket retailing in their respective national markets, should there be an obligation on these vendors to sell tickets for services provided by all operators, including their competitors?
  • should dominant national operators or those holding PSO contracts be obliged to allow third parties to sell tickets on their behalf? and
  • if a passenger has purchased a combination of tickets from different operators in a single transaction, should they be offered compensation if a train is delayed and they miss their connection?

“We want passengers to be able to get the most out of the system so they can buy easily in one transaction tickets across different operators and combine them in such a way that they don’t get stuck if something goes wrong,” Obst says.

AllRail members, consisting predominately of Europe’s private passenger operators, feel especially aggrieved. They point to the situation in Germany where German Rail (DB) refuses to sell FlixTrain tickets through its DB Navigator app, the country’s predominant ticket sales platform, and in France where French National Railways (SNCF) does not provide details of fares or schedules for Trenitalia France services on SNCF Connect, again the dominant sales platform.

AllRail president and managing director of European Sleeper, Elmer van Buuren, says it is in the interest of all rail operators to open up these sales channels. He says experience shows this would improve rail’s appeal, increasing the size of the market. “There is a huge opportunity to make the pie larger,” he says.

Likewise, his counterpart at Westbahn, managing director, Thomas Posch, highlights the success of Austria’s Klimaticket. He says the annual ticket, which is valid for travel on all domestic rail services for a flat fee, has eliminated many barriers to rail travel, helping to increase overall ridership in Austria for both Westbahn and Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) since it was introduced in 2021.

“What we have achieved with Klimaticket in Austria for frequent travellers must be the goal for the single ticket market in Europe,” he says.

“Without a new EU law, without regulations, passengers will always be trapped in these national silos and cross-border rail will remain far from achieving its potential.”

Kai Tegethoff, Green MEP from Germany

Two MEPs who participated in the debate also outlined their expectations for the upcoming legislation. Austrian Green MEP, Sophia Kirchner, emphasised the need for transparency in bookings while Kai Tegethoff, a Green MEP from Germany, advocated the introduction of an enforceable data sharing obligation along with a framework that ends gatekeeping by dominant players in the market.

He says that this must be accompanied by a robust set of rules that protect passenger rights, including obliging operators to accept tickets issued by their competitors in the event of disruption, ending the current situation where passengers are forced to purchase another ticket to complete their journey if they are using another operator.

“Without a new EU law, without regulations, passengers will always be trapped in these national silos and cross-border rail will remain far from achieving its potential,” Tegethoff says.

Response

It was left to Alberto Mazzola, director general of the Community of European Railways and Infrastructure Companies (CER), to voice the concerns of incumbent operators.

He focused his concerns on avoiding a situation experienced in the wider travel market where dominant online sales platforms such as booking.com effectively control access to the market and could potentially charge a commission of 2-3% to rail operators, squeezing much-needed income from ticket sales. “I think we’re heading in a direction that other sectors are trying to get out of and I don’t think it’s the best route,” Mazzola says. “It would be difficult for us to charge 3% more for a ticket.”

Mazzola’s argument is countered by van Buuren, who says that allowing a third party to sell tickets would reduce the burden and distribution costs for operators. He also argues that these well-known distribution brands might also be able to reach a larger market, and that the rail sector might benefit from their entrepreneurial spirit.

With rail largely adapting well to the rise of online retail, the challenge of improving distribution in Europe is political, not technical, and deserves an adequate response from the continent’s politicians in the coming months. As Obst points out, successfully delivering the Single European Railway Area is just as much about improving rail’s ability to attract new passengers as it is about building new infrastructure.

“It has the potential to be like data roaming,” she says. “Giving you the opportunity as a passenger to make choices between different offers and to combine tickets relatively easily.”