European Commission simplifies Europe-wide travel booking and train travel

Parts of this are already realized by private companies, e. g. Deutsche Bahn journey planner for train connections in / to and from Germany.

Other companies such as Omio already realized comparisons between modes of transport and different providers.

Other companies such as Omio already realized comparisons between modes of transport and different providers.

Omio is such a great app, for some reason many people on this forum don't like it at all.

Omio is pretty useless. I just checked for Paris to Lyon and it only suggested long journeys by road coaches. So, then I went into filters and put in for direct trains- search - and it still failed to offer me the high seed trains that operate on this route.

Then I tried Newport in south Wales (UK) to Edinburgh and again, it only showed me bus/coach options taking around 15 hours and going into central London to change to another coach to head north to Edinburgh. This is completely bonkers way to do such a trip. It can be done by train in around 5 to 6 hours and not going anywhere near London.

https://www.thetrainline.com I find is the best site to use for finding train travel across Europe - though I would not use it for trains in the Britain as https://www.buytickets.scotrail.co.uk will come up with same prices for any train journey in Britain and not charge a commission. (They may do 1 split if it reduces the price).

https://trainsplit.com and https://www.traintickets.com/?/ are also good for trains in Britain only and they find ways of reducing the price of getting from a to b by splitting the ticket if it gets a saving - but charge commission on the amount saved.

Omio is pretty useless. I just checked for Paris to Lyon and it only suggested long journeys by road coaches. So, then I went into filters and put in for direct trains- search - and it still failed to offer me the high seed trains that operate on this route.

I just looked at Omio for Paris to Lyon on a random date (5/14) and it shows trains, buses and planes. For the trains, there are several that are under 2 hours.

While I don't see the point to a third party website like Omio, in the interest of fairness I have just checked and for Newport to Edinburgh it categorically does offer me all the many and various rail options, also bus/coach options via Birmingham (as well as via London) and flight options from Bristol, which include the direct bus from Newport to Bristol Airport. I checked for next Monday, 18 May, and see no obvious missing options.

I would never use such train splitting fare companies, as all they are doing is abstracting money (internal commission) from the rail industry, to profits for private companies, who then double dip by charging the end user external commission.
Too often they don't even give the cheapest fare and I have seen some scarcely believable routes from them, like London Euston to Newcastle via Carlisle, split fare on the last train of the night. OK if the connection isn't missed, then you are on your own without replacement transport.

I have just gone back to the Omio site and now it is indeed coming up with the train options. Goodness knows what happened earlier when it just offered me slower bus/coach transport.

One of the problems with the British train company booking sites is that if you are on a journey with say 2 companies, they can’t come up with the cheaper advance tickets for company a and then combine that with the advance ticket for company b - they just come up with a very expensive through ticket. Hopefully this will change as the UK government are gradually taking control of the train operators as their contracts end. Whilst such a system exists, you can’t blame people for using the split ticket websites in order to reduce the fares - which mile for mile are some of the most expensive in the world.

or maybe EU taxes will just go up to cover it. But nothing is free.

The EU does not raise any direct taxes.

I do not support the one-sided negative view on EU improvements, especially not cost wise. They improved a lot in daily life which reduced complexity and costs significantly - especially for travelers and cross-border living. The Euro is one thing, Schengen zone another (initiated by Kohl and Mitterrand), also the disappearing roaming costs for mobile and data usage. Just to name a few very visible examples.

In general think of Interrail which was a major change in train travel - and this in 1972. Initially planned for 9 months only. 235 Deutsche Mark for traveling up to 20 countries. And it is still there, what a success. And the first travelers still have great memories of their first journeys.

Hey Mark, I went back and read my first post and yup, I do come across confrontational way too often. My apologies. I revisited a gentleman named Marcus who offered some good advice on the subject. With that advice I think it best I withdraw my comments.

This is a proposal. This now goes to the parliament, that will have its say too.

There is good stuff there, but there is also some not so good stuff.
Jon Worth has a good overview here:

https://jonworth.eu/how-to-make-the-rail-ticketing-aspects-of-the-european-commissions-passenger-package-more-workable/
https://jonworth.eu/state-railways-whats-wrong-cers-perplexing-response-to-the-european-commissions-passenger-package/

I'm not sure if I missed something in the comments, but the big thing in the proposal is to make delays the rail company's problem rather than the passengers, i.e. if you miss a connection due to delays, then they have to give you a ticket to the next train. Much like a air passenger with both trips on one ticket.

i.e. if you miss a connection due to delays, then they have to give you a ticket to the next train

You already have this right. It is not necessary to have a single ticket for that. Which is why railway advocates are puzzled by this. Requiring a single ticket between any two points in Europe is going to be a nightmare to implement.

Omio is such a great app, for some reason many people on this forum don't like it at all.

"for SOME reason"? How about this reason?

A few years ago, my partner and I went by train from Lindau, Germany, to Rothenburg odT. The trip by train took just under 5 hours and we were able to do it with a 2 person Bayern-Ticket which costs 34€ (less than $40) today.

I went to Omio.com/app and searched for a trip from Lindau to Rothenburg. It recommended we fly from Zürich, Switzerland to Nuremberg, Germany on Lufthansa, 3h10 with a 1h20 change at FRA, for over $1500, with no explanation of how we were supposed to get from Lindau to Zürich or from Nuremberg to Rothenburg or the total time or cost.

So I clicked on train, and it told me are were no train connections for the trip I wanted to take. ??? That trip, by train, is still shown on the Bahn website. That seems like some reason to me.

At least Trainline got the train connection right, but it wanted over $56, 42% more than what the Bahn wants, which was less than $40.

That's why I always tell people that the Bahn website is THE place to go for German rail tickets.

Update: OK, I finally found the problem. Although I specifically typed "Lindau, Germany", the Omio website changed the search to "Lindau, Switzerland". I finally somehow forced it to search for Lindau, Germany, and then it did give me the correct train routing, but it still quoted the price of a 2 person ticket at $56+, not the $40- that the Bahn charges.

So, not only does Omio charge more than the Bahn does for the same ticket, but you can't claim that Omio is easier to use because it decided on it's own to change my search criteria, from Germany to Switzerland. And, even if I had wanted Lindau, Switzerland, it didn't show me Lindau to Zürich or Nuremberg to Rothenburg. Omio is worthless.

Apparently, to get the right starting point from Omio, you have to specify "Lindau (Bodensee), Germany".

A good example why some posts with so called typers here on the forum get feedback about the correct spelling of destinations.

In a lot of cases the reason for mistakes can be classified as "pbk" (an abbreviation from helpdesk statistics standing for "problem behind keyboard"). Of course not meant personally.

"Rothenburg" means "red castle". Not surprisingly there are more than one red castle in Germany.

So you have Rothenbrug od Tauber. The one everyone wants to go to.
There is Rothenburg (Oberlausitz) which is near the Polish/Czech border.
And there is Rothenburg (LU) in Switzerland.

Then there are variants that drop the h.
Rotenburg an der Fulda
Rotenburg (Wümme) (twinned with Aalter in Belgium, where I grew up. Which is why I know :-)

There are also at least two places called Essen. Two Frankfurts...

Switzerland especially seems to have a habit of reusing names. There are even two places called Pfäffikon that are both on the Zürich S-Bahn network..

So if you look places in railway trip planners watch out for anything added to the name in parentheses...

Do not forget the two Berlin which was one of the most embarrassing UI problems of BMW when Berlin (Seedorf) with 500+ inhabitants occurred always first in the navigation system with the question "Do you mena Berlin (Seedorf)?" after drivers entered an address in the capital of Berlin. This happened also when drivers did a search when they were actually in capital of Berlin. And this every day over years.

There is also a place called Zurich (without umlaut) in the Netherlands. Pay attention :-)

Mark, I went to a few national train websites and I didnt notice any changes?? For the other question about names, the EU should assign each station a code like airports have. Might take 6 or 9 letters because there are so darn many of them .... but then you wouldnt need to be fluent in French and have a doctorate in cartography to book a train.

That is where it gets complicated as many (most?) countries do have such codes, but they are not in regular passenger use.
So you would be having to reinvent the wheel to have one set of codes for all of Europe. Probably prefix with a country code.
Germany is one such example with a code for each station.
Also IATA has codes for rail stations which can or have in the past been able to be booked in connection with flights so Flam (Norway) has IATA code XGH and London Kings Cross to York is QQK to QQY.
Likewise some German rail stations have IATA codes.

The UK has 3 letter codes for each station (and some non rail served locations) - you should see the awesome list of codes just for Heathrow.

Even Amtrak has them, including for non rail served destinations, such as Duluth, MN. (which has 2 codes). When the station at Duluth reopens in 2027 it may get a third code.

isn31c, excellent. We just plug that into the new EU compliant websites and we will all be buying single tickets from one end of tge EU to the other ... maybe real soon!

We will see how this plays out, because the solution as suggested is in my opinion not workable.

And frankly, I don't really care if my Wengen - Barcelona booking ends up with three different QR codes.
What we need is some system to make sure I do not strand in Lyon if the train from Geneva is late.

Booking train travel is actually pretty straightforward in most cases, as long as France is not involved.

the big problem with integration, multi modal and third party planner sites is responsiblity for accuracy. If each operator maintains it's own ring fenced site then they are clearly responsible for the accuracy, even when things are altered for various reasons. If they off load sales to a third party (as LNER in britain does with foreign customers - they send them to a version of Omio) then they still have responsiblity. But when third party sites, or centralised national sites (like Traveline in GB), or even a pan-EU site scrapes data from a source, without constantly checking for changes, who gets the blame when a passenger arrives at a station for a train which isn't running or went earlier than normal? The answer is usually the train company staff on the ground who are faced with a confused person pointing at a phone screaming "they told me...." - without having a clue who they were.

And that's all without the systems that don't understand things about individual countries, so they suggest using National Express coaches in britain for 5 mile trips based on a schedule they found, but which NatEx won't sell tickets for because they are a long distance carrier. Or they suggest most long distance trains in Britain have compulsory reservations (not true!) because they scraped data that included a field which is basically defunct for it's original purpose but is being used for something else!!

me.crewe, but isn't this why the EU wants to regulate tge market; because a government agency can bring simplicity, uniformity and equity to travel on the continent?

Mr É, no it's the opposite. The EU some years ago decided it wanted to deregulate the market, which is why state rail operators were either broken up or they now have competition on commercial routes and tendering amongst companies for subsidised routes. This all seemed very clever from a political point of view but once it got going it has become clear that the central organisation had been lost. And then along came third party resellers with their own software (instead of old fashioned agents who used the state company systems) and eventually third party Bots which not only use own software but have no real way of handling complaints and refund claims. Then to top the pile, millions of passengers trying to run their lives from phones which they can barely switch on. Choice and freedom have become something many people can't cope with.

So somewhere in Brussels someone thought it would be a good idea to muddy the waters by bringing in this change - after all to a politicians change is a good way of appearing to be doing something.

The ironic thing is that Britain led the way on rail privatisation and deregulation and delay compensation - but is now bringing back (mostly) a single state owned organisation - and the single website to go with it!. Trainline was an invention of British privatisation but in 2 years time their British market will be gone! And this apparently left wing policy was begun by Boris Johnson, a right wing politician and is even generally accepted by Farage and his far right party.

but isn't this why the EU wants to regulate tge market; because a
government agency can bring simplicity, uniformity and equity to
travel on the continent?

A single government agency does not necessarily result in simplicity. Look at Spain. You have one big national company, RENFE, yet for about 90% of all possible origin - destination pairs you can't buy tickets with them.

In Switzerland you have about 300 different companies, yet you can buy a single ticket between any two public transit stops...

The arrival of Italo forced Trenitalia to clean up its act. I still remember how it used to be, with Trenitalia sometimes opening tickets sales for the busy Christmas travel season only in the second week of December!. Trenitalia also completely abandoned all international train at one time. Trenitalia now wanting to expand, eg. to France, is a good thing. SNCF really needs to get some competition.

And buying tickets is actually not that hard, as long as you do not need to go to France. This is the elephant in the room. The main issue is France...

One thing should not be forgotten: Buying tickets for trips that crossed multiple borders was never easy. I know. I have the receipts.

I have in my home a box with train tickets going back 4 decades. Some of them even hand written.

If the EU manages to get a system working where I can go online and just buy a trip between any two stations in Europe than we will have something that has never existed before...

Im confused. I've bought a number of tickets, from one national vendor, that cross several borders?? XYG to XXQ for instance.

Im confused. I've bought a number of tickets, from one national
vendor, that cross several borders?? XYG to XXQ for instance.

I'm confused as well. Which train stations are XyG and XXQ?

XYG is Prague Hlvani Nadrazi railway station and XXQ is Budapest Keleti railway station in IATA speak (their codes for inclusive rail journeys from those stations in connection with air tickets).

One trip you will probably never be able to book as a single ticket is Europe's longest continuous rail journey, when it opens sometime this summer- Vila Real de San Antonio (Portugal) to Helsinki (Finland) via Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lulea.

My suspicion is that using Eurail/Interrail will be the easiest way to ticket such a route, adding fast train supplements.

Yes, through tickets work pretty well within central Europe, as long as you stick with systems that use NRT ticketing. It is the moment you try to cross to Latin Europe that it gets complicated...