THE first World Public Transport Day on April 17 celebrated the important role that public transport modes of all kinds play in connecting people. Yet with the private car still accounting for 70% of all journeys in the European Union (EU), and the annual distance travelled by cars increasing by 25% between 1995 and 2022, contributing to ever-rising carbon emissions, public transport needs to do more.
Building new lines and boosting the capacity of existing infrastructure is one answer to this challenge. But it is not the only solution. Offering an enhanced journey experience that is better aligned with passenger expectations is now increasingly viewed as crucial if operators are to lure more people away from their cars and onto public transport.
How to achieve this was discussed during the International Union of Railways’ (UIC) inaugural Passenger Week and a conference held in Paris on April 14. Much of the discussion focused on the challenges of offering seamless multimodal journeys, in particular by integrating traditionally siloed national ticketing and distribution systems.
The discussion is especially pertinent as the European Commission (EC) prepares to announce a long-anticipated regulatory shake-up of rail ticketing at some point in the second quarter of 2026. The EC has said it wants the Single Ticketing Package to guarantee that passengers can buy a single ticket for their cross-border journey, ideally with a single click. A recent study by think tank Transport & Environment emphasises the challenges ahead, finding that cross-border rail tickets were not available for equivalent journeys on 20% of Europe’s 30 busiest aviation routes.
The rail sector has again proven effective at developing a technical solution but not at addressing the broader political issues at work.
While the principle of offering a ticket for a complete door-to-door journey via a single transaction is relatively simple, delivery is far from straight-forward. It requires the alignment of varying standards, payment platforms, distribution and delivery options, as well as cooperation between different and often competing operators to provide a service that guarantees passengers will reach their final destination, all while supporting a viable business model.
The conference sessions offered some good examples of where improved integration is benefiting passengers. The Grand Est region of France presented its programme to introduce a shared 2D barcode for tickets, which is now used by seven urban operators in the region with work underway to roll it out to three more. Lufthansa presented its project with German Rail (DB) to introduce combined rail-air ticketing on 240 services operating each day between 28 German cities and Frankfurt International Airport, while UIC provided an update on its project with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to better combine air and rail services.
Samtrafiken also presented its work to deliver a universal multimodal ticketing solution for public transport across Sweden, which went live in April 2024, and uses the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM). This neutral standard developed within the UIC is facilitating a single national distribution system for public transport ticketing, combining the once disparate services offered by 55 operators, 21 public transport authorities, and seven inventory systems.
While Samtrafiken is focusing solely on Sweden, DB, another early adopter, has used OSDM to sell tickets for travel on Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), French National Railways (SNCF), Eurostar, Trenitalia and SJ. This has helped it offer an additional 8000 cross-border journey options and increase bookings for international tickets by 75% since introduction in June 2025.
SBB, ÖBB, SNCF, Danish State Railways (DSB) and Polish State Railways (PKP) are all on the path to migrating to OSDM. More broadly, UIC is pushing its Open Multi-Modal Toolkit (OMMT) as the means for public transport service providers to overcome the challenge of integration. Consisting of five pillars, the toolkit offers a universal framework designed to facilitate cooperation between different transport modes and service providers.
It brings together the alphabet soup of international and national standards under a single platform, including OSDM for distribution, NeTEx for timetable data, eTCD for real-time information exchange, and NGRS for revenue distribution. This minimises the need to modify existing IT systems and helps service providers to avoid costly and bespoke system integration.
While OMMT provides what seems like a workable framework to accelerate deployment of a multimodal ticketing and distribution system, take-up is slow. For many national railways there is little budget or commercial desire to align their services, especially with those in neighbouring states, or with perceived competitors. DB has partnered with just a few fellow state-owned operators for its OSDM rollout, underlining concerns over selective deployment expressed by open-access and private operators, many of which struggle with ticket distribution and visibility in the market. As one delegate remarked, the rail sector has again proven effective at developing a technical solution but not at addressing the broader political issues at work.
But is the framework even needed? The rise of Uber and other on-demand mobility services has redefined and realigned people’s expectations for using taxi services around the world. The platforms are trustworthy, straightforward to use, and work in the same way no matter where you are. Could integrating rail ticketing, supplanting traditional vendors, be the next development? Could this deliver the improvement in passenger experience that the market is demanding?
OMMT protects the status quo by providing the framework for national railways to continue to dominate rail ticketing and distribution. But unless they get onboard soon, and offer full visibility, they risk losing their position in the market. Artificial Intelligence platforms like Chat GPT are beginning to change how people plan journeys, presenting passengers with options that the industry is unable to offer. If railways cannot bridge this gap, others most certainly will.
