Italy’s Trenitalia best, Eurostar worst in European rail passenger rankings

I read this too! I don't doubt the passenger experience rankings, but Simon Calder suggests you treat the price rankings with some skepticism:

My, how cheap these Swiss trains are. Or are they?
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/cheap-switzerland-train-rail-fares-b2665929.html

The group that made this ranking has since then demoted SBB to, I believe, 11th place, as they had indeed forgotten to take in to account that the prices SBB shows on its website assume you have the half fare card.

But the whole study is basically nonsensical. It has been widely panned by about everyone in the industry.

For example the study completely ignores the important factor of schedule quality. Are trains frequent? Do they connect well? Punctuality should be balance with that, as for example, if you miss a connection in Spain you may get stranded as lots of trains are once a day trains. But in Germany if you miss a train you can just get on the next one, which does offset the low punctuality somewhet.
A lot of networks also lost points because of the non-existence of night trains. But you do not expect small countries like Belgium or The Netherlands to have domestic night trains. NS and NMBS also get penalised for not catering on board. Given that NS basically runs a nationwide subway it is a bit ridiculous to discount them on that.

The main flaw is that you cannot compare long distance high speed networks with mass transit networks. The proper network to compare for example the NS with is for example the Paris RER, or the Berlin S-Bahn, not with Avanti Westcoast opr RENFE AVE.

NMBS is basically a commuter railway, and comparing it with NS is proper. SBB and OBB are comparable.

I can't see from the report as to who wrote it or what their motives were.

But I agree that the scoring methodology is seriously flawed. Comparing apples and oranges, or chalk and cheese. How to totally misuse statistics.

On their current network how on earth could Eurostar have night trains?,and they seem to be unaware that Eurostar now includes Thalys.

Anyone who originally marked Swiss Railways highly for their low fares, but who marked down Eurostar for their high fares displays a deep lack of knowledge of the respective fare policies.

And Belgian Railways are not noted for such late running as would justify having a compensation policy. To mark them down for something which basically isn't needed is not sensible. And the size of the country would never justify domestic night trains.

This looks to me like little more than clickbait by people with little knowledge of railways.

The report is not clickbait. But it does look like occupational therapy for a certain lobby group...

Yes, that ranking is pretty useless. Railway commentator Jon Worth wrote a blog post about it that is worth reading if you plan to take this seriously: https://jonworth.eu/no-eurostar-isnt-the-worst-performing-train-company-in-europe-but-if-youre-te-does-it-matter/

NS and NMBS also get penalised for not catering on board. Given that
NS basically runs a nationwide subway it is a bit ridiculous to
discount them on that.

That is actually not an unreasonable thing to critizise them for. There are longer domestic trains in both countries, and being able to buy a cup of tea onboard would be nice.

“ NS and NMBS also get penalised for not catering on board. Given that NS basically runs a nationwide subway it is a bit ridiculous to discount them on that.”

For this exact reason, NS objected against the heavy weight that was given to the onboard catering score in the study. The average train ride in the Netherlands is only 47 km’s and lasts less than 30 minutes. No need for onboard catering for such a short route. Besides that, train stations in the Netherlands are basically food courts where you can also board a train. Amsterdam central train station for instance has over 30 food outlets.

The report is flatly wrong in saying that Avanti and GWR have the best compensation policies in Europe- that trophy is held by Northern Rail.
Northern give you free tickets to anywhere on the Northern network for a delay over 30 minutes. So you can literally get a ticket worth up to £80 (eg Carlisle to Doncaster or Nottingham) for a journey that cost £2. And in some cases had a free taxi ride home as well.
I've actually several times had a taxi ride which would have cost £150 or more + a free network ticket for a fare of £2 or £3.
Any other UK operator like Avanti (or LNER or South Western Trains) 'only' give a 100% refund for over an hour delay.
But, oh sorry, they only seem to have looked at Avanti and GWR in the UK- why?- and in one case spell Avanti incorrectly (now someone has posted the full report.
I also dispute strongly that Avanti have the highest fares- empirically LNER (who don't seem to have been studied) seem to have higher full price fares per mile than Avanti. But there is a fundamental difference between the fares manuals and what most people actually pay. In the real world the vast majority of people use Advance Fares which are available on Avanti until shortly before travel.
And also in the UK so many people qualify for Railcards- another inconvenient fact not apparently taken into account.

The proper way to do such a comparison is to compare countries, not companies, as even though there are multiple companies in eg. the UK, they still function as one system.

So you could start with picking 5 random, places in each country, and four the 10 pairings this results in look up
- Trip time
- Schedule frequency
- Likelyhood to arrive on time.
- Easy of getting tickets
- Price
- Experience.

If you do this, then RENFE already falls through, as for most random station pairings in Spain RENFE won't even sell you a ticket...

Then do the same with random pairings between places in neighbouring countries. Here SNCF will probably be disqualified...

I delved in the study a bit further and noticed that the Dutch national railway company NS scores somewhere in the middle of the group when it comes to the booking process. How is that even possible when you don’t need to book trains in the Netherlands in the first place!?! All you have to do is tap your credit card, debit card, smartwatch or phone at the reader at the entrance of the train station to open the gate, walk thru the gate, board the next available train, disembark at your destination, tap the same card again to open the gate and your account will be charged for the correct fare.
And yes, foreign credit cards like Visa and Mastercard are accepted too. So why the low rating? This just doesn’t make any sense at all…

Italy’s Trenitalia is the best rail passenger operator in Europe

LOL. How does this help a traveler vacationing in France, Germany or Spain?

This isn't like comparing airlines who fly to multiple cities and countries or car rental companies. Maybe the train industry felt left out because airlines and car rentals get ranked and they don't. Silly article, but interesting to read.

Badger, I was going to post Jon's analysis, thanks for posting it !

I liked this that he had to say, too:

Eurostar scored zero on the “night trains” category. Amazing! It’s a high speed operator, not a night train operator. And it scored very low on ticket price and low due to an absence of special fares and reductions. But hey ho, it’s a commercial service! Legacy operators like SNCF or DB are going to have lots of special fares that they are obliged to have as hangovers from their time as state owned monopolies.

Meanwhile German operators scored low due to a lack of reliability – not wrong as anyone who has travelled in Germany recently can attest. But I would put money on it that if Trenitalia (the highest scoring) started running trains tomorrow in Germany it would do no better.The quality of the outcome is about the entire system, not just an operator.

Badger, I was going to post Jon's analysis, thanks for posting it !

Great minds think alike?