Paris is to hold a referendum in February 2024 to triple parking charges (to €18/hour) in parts of the city, and double them (to €12/hour) in some of the outer parts of the city. Details of exactly what is proposed here. Great idea, I am all for it. The news[Read More...] The pos … | Continue reading
It’s one of the most common questions I field from journalists: “would more private companies help with the state of the railways in Europe?” And rather than a yes or no, my answer is instead “I’m not sure“. That puts me in a strange position – I take no position[Read More...] Th … | Continue reading
In the past couple of days, my Mastodon feed has been full of astonishment about how three Polish IT specialists discovered digital sabotage attempts in trains built by manufacturer NEWAG. The original Mastodon toot is here, and there is more detail about the case in Polish, Germ … | Continue reading
In January 2023 the European Commission announced its 10 cross border railway pilot projects. That the Commission would do this was a commitment in its 2021 action plan to boost passenger rail. Once in a while the European Commission tries to communicate about these pilot project … | Continue reading
“Machen, was zählt” – “Do, what counts” That was the slogan of the party conference of the German Grüne this week in Karlsruhe, and I was running for a place on the party’s European Parliament election list. That effort failed completely yesterday evening when I tried to run for … | Continue reading
By the end of this week I will finally know my fate – on Friday 24th November the congress of the German Grüne will vote for the party’s list of candidates for its European Parliament, and I hope to be elected to position 14 on the list. Having worked on[Read More...] The post Wh … | Continue reading
In the summer of 2021 I made a trip from Berlin to Beograd, Serbia (this blog post resulted from the trip) – with as much of it by train as possible. At that stage Budapest-Kelebia-Subotica, and Subotica-Novi Sad were both possible by train, but Novi Sad-Beograd had not been re-o … | Continue reading
France managed to make a huge splash by banning some short haul flights earlier this year. It managed to gain the country’s government massive positive publicity. Now in the talks to form a new coalition in Spain, a similar ban there might be possible too. But when you look into[ … | Continue reading
This week’s schedule: Tuesday – train Berlin-Bruxelles Wednesday – train Bruxelles-Maastricht-Bruxelles Friday – train Bruxelles-Berlin Three countries. Borders I have crossed dozens of times before. But not altogether simple when it comes to the railway connections. At least I k … | Continue reading
Yesterday in Berlin I went to an event organised by Bahnkunden Verband about the need to rebuild and upgrade the Berliner Ostbahn. This is the rail line that connects Berlin and Kostrzyn in Poland, and lines onwards eastward across Poland. This was all the Königlich Preußische Os … | Continue reading
When Sergio Almeida messaged me this morning about the cancellation of direct passenger trains between Cheb (Czechia) and Nürnberg (Germany) from December, it was news to me. I’d taken this very train in May this year, and suddenly this train that ran every 2 hours is no more. Fr … | Continue reading
In the draft European Parliament election programme of the German Grüne (full PDF here) you can find this paragraph about night trains (my translation): Night trains are a comfortable and climate-friendly way to travel long distances within Europe and thus a good alternative to f … | Continue reading
On Page 29 of the draft European Parliament election programme of the German Grüne (full PDF in German here), you can find this text (my translation): What is taken for granted when booking flights should in future also be standard for all train journeys in Europe. With a cross-p … | Continue reading
52.2km as the crow flies. 67.3km train route kilometres. Those are the distances between Wissembourg (Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France) and Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France). And I want to travel between the two by train after dinner on Saturday 21st October. Fair enough, surely? Fra … | Continue reading
I am at World Passengers’ Festival in Vienna today, and four ticket vendors are here: Trip.com, Trainline, Rail Europe and All Aboard. So, I wondered, how do these platforms do with some pretty simple international journeys? And based on this research I am going to go to their st … | Continue reading
Due to the overcrowding of the Kulturzug, all passengers are asked to download the slides onto their own phones. Click here to download the PDF. Aufgrund der Überfüllung des Kulturzuges werden alle Fahrgäste gebeten, die Dias auf ihre eigenen Handys herunterzuladen. Klicke hier, … | Continue reading
My previous post was a kind of hopeless “well we know the problems with railways, but what do we do?” Here – and motivated by Justin Scholz who has been pushing me to write this sort of thing for months – here are a series of policy proposals to fix[Read More...] The post Policy … | Continue reading
Another day, another depressing study. Greenpeace looked at rail and motorway investments across Europe, and found 66 % more budget spent to extend roads than to extend railways. Between 1995 and 2018 there was a 60% increase in the length of Europe’s motorways – more than 30,000 … | Continue reading
So far one EU country with a railway has been missing from my #CrossBorderRail project – Ireland. Because it only has a railway border to a non-EU Member State. But this autumn I am finally putting that right! Ireland and France aim to make it possible to travel between the[Read … | Continue reading
I am doing some comparative research about railways in Europe this summer and that has led me to the question: what makes a good train timetable? And that then leads inevitably to a Taktfahplan or, better still, a Integraler Taktfahplan (German language Wikipedia here) By which p … | Continue reading
For most of the past two years I have poured all of my political energy into transport policy topics – the Trains for Europe campaign, and the #CrossBorderRail project. And this website that has become a kind of hub for my railway commentary. At one level that has all worked[Read … | Continue reading
The FT reported a couple of days ago that Mobico (the new name for National Express) wants to run trains through the Channel Tunnel, rivalling Eurostar, and to do that by 2025 using new trains built by Alstom. Mobico’s share price is up this morning based on the news. The[Read Mo … | Continue reading
Party! From 28 July there will be 4 trains a day each way on the Figueres – Perpignan cross border high speed line! A doubling of the services! Renfe’s entry into the French market! Eh, hang on. 4 trains a day each way on a dual track electrified line capable[Read More...] The po … | Continue reading
That the removal of just one car parking space can in the future be enough to stop a bicycle infrastructure project in Berlin has of course led to justifiable howls of critique. A car friendly transport policy is what you get from a city administration run by the CDU (and[Read Mo … | Continue reading
There are two high-ish speed routes between Paris Est and Frankfurt(Main)Hbf by train – the shorter one in terms of route-km but with less high speed infrastructure via Saarbrücken (mapped here), and the 70km longer one but with more high speed lines via Strasbourg and Karlsruhe … | Continue reading
A Friday evening in early June. I am in a compartment in a delayed EuroCity train from München to Klagenfurt, and I am helping one of my fellow passengers in the compartment with their onward connections due to the delay, and conversation turns to broader railway issues, and I ex … | Continue reading
1st May heralds a major change in public transport in Germany: the introduction of the Deutschlandticket. I’ve explained where to buy it before – but that’s quite simple. What about where it’s valid? That’s more complex. And the way I explain complexity? With diagrams of course! … | Continue reading
From 1st May 2023 there is a new, flat-rate ticket for public transport in Germany: the DeutschlandTicket. €49 per month, for unlimited use of regional public transport in the whole of the country. That means buses, trams, metros, S-Bahn and regional trains. Or the other way arou … | Continue reading
Ordered in 2019, and presented with great fanfare by Malu Dreyer in 2021, the new Régiolis diesel-electric hybrid trains were due to enter service on France-Germany regional routes in December 2024. And now – it quietly slipped out – that date has been pushed to December 2026, ac … | Continue reading
On 2nd May – just two weeks from now – I set off on my latest #CrossBorderRail adventure. This time I am going back to all of Germany’s rail borders that I did not visit in 2022. You can find the background about the 2023 project here. This post gives[Read More...] The post Event … | Continue reading
This cropped up in my LinkedIn feed earlier today. At the time I commented on it, simply saying it was bullshit. Now I am going to take it apart, and break down why it is bullshit. The map comes from this article from Toute l’Europe. We’ve been here before. Someone[Read More...] … | Continue reading
In the summer of 2022 with the #CrossBorderRail project I crossed all of the EU’s internal borders that you can cross by train. This video sums up what I discovered: Rather than one huge project, this year I am going to be doing a series of smaller projects to document[Read More. … | Continue reading
Before we can really scale up night trains in Europe, someone (other than ÖBB!) has to order some new trains. This is the argument I have been making for some time on my Trains for Europe site. So it was good to have the FT examine the subject. The piece[Read More...] The post Qu … | Continue reading
Basel, Switzerland. The latest city for which a direct train to London has been proposed. It is unlikely to get it, as are Geneva, Köln (CDU-Green NRW coalition agreement Page 132), Frankfurt and Bordeaux. And Marseille and Lyon are unlikely to get their direct trains to London b … | Continue reading
I was one of three regular railway passengers asked by German weekly paper Die Zeit to meet head of DB Fernverkehr Michael Peterson to discuss Deutsche Bahn’s current woes. The interview appeared in the printed paper on 9 March 2023, and is online here (paywalled). “Worth: Den Är … | Continue reading
It’s a common refrain: more people would take the train – especially on international routes – if only it were cheaper! That line of argument assumes that there are actually more trains to take. In other words that there is spare capacity. The problem is that – in many cases[Read … | Continue reading
Christian Hunt (I was a guest on his podcast) just sent me this article from TimeOut about proposed Milano-München trains, and asked me if I could do some quick analysis of it. I have already written one piece about this proposed route here, but TimeOut makes such a complete mess … | Continue reading
I spoke to Peter Neumann of Berliner Zeitung about the plans for new, faster trains on Italy-Germany routes over the Brenner Pass – explained more in English here. This is a quote in German: “Das sind dicke Bretter. Doch Trenitalia, die ÖBB und die DB pflegen eine „gute Kooperati … | Continue reading
This popped up in my Facebook feed just now: It links here. The graphic has 2.5k reactions, 375 comments, and 468 shares. The problem? Yeah, it’s pretty much ALL wrong. Mi O My Italy who posted it posted the right km/h to mph conversion in their text above the pic,[Read More...] … | Continue reading
Over on Mastodon, Gregor Herrmann pointed me towards this story in German publication Merkur about German, Austrian and Italian railways planning faster rail connections between München and Milano, and München and Roma. ORF and Die Presse covered the story in Austria, but here I … | Continue reading
A few days ago it was announced that Stadler has won the contract to supply new long distance trains to Norway. The official press release from Norske Tog in Norwegian is here, and there are articles from IRJ and Global Railway Review in English as well. While this tender only[Re … | Continue reading
In rail nerd circles we’ve had our eye on the launch of the European Sleeper service for some time – the new privately operated night train that will run Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin, and eventually will be extended to Prague. As was announced recently in the company’s newsletter, … | Continue reading
Süddeutsche Zeitung. Hamburger Morgenpost. Bild. Stern. T-Online. NDR. RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. Zeit. FAZ. They all wrote yesterday about the “new” night train Hamburg-Stockholm that – according to all the stories – had its premiere yesterday. The problem? The train has be … | Continue reading
One of the aims of this new “Quick takes” category here is for me to write things something longer than a toot or tweet, but not as well thought out as longer-form blog posts. So here goes. This toot – boosted into my Mastodon home feed by Aarne Granlund this[Read More...] The po … | Continue reading
When the European Commission released details of its pilot services to boost cross-border rail, it caused quite a splash – it was even front page news in Metro in Belgium: The problem was that much of the coverage was mis-guided, at least in part thanks to the European Commission … | Continue reading
Today I made a rather unusual trip to Berlin Hbf – I was not actually departing on a train anywhere! Instead the purpose of my trip was to a meeting for some media work – I will post more about that in due course. But the trip gave me the[Read More...] The post Bike parking at Be … | Continue reading
For a long time all my analysis of railway policy was bundled in with the rest of the things I have written over the years about other topics – Brexit, EU politics, UK politics and technology. But as I want to work more on railway issues, and develop campaigns and[Read More...] T … | Continue reading
One of my repeated frustrations when working on railway policy in the European Union is how imprecise and woolly the communication from policy makers in the area is. This is in particular the case when European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vălean talks about railways. S … | Continue reading