After my rather hopeless earlier post about how Greenpeace's report about the shrinking European rail network shows us what's wrong, but not what can we do... a further post with 10 policy proposals
These are the things I would do to put right some of Europe's rail ills, with the focus on #CrossBorderRail
@jon good points!
regarding your previous article: "where the reduction of the length of the German network has nevertheless not stopped passenger numbers on the railways increasing by 40% over the same period." 1) passenger numbers (P or Pkm?) are more dependent on train capacity than rail network length, and likely tracks with no or rare service were closed (but for modal shift, tracks are a prerequisite for train service). 2) freight is also affected by network shrinkage / growth.
Harsher refund rates for delayed journeys
(if 4-5 times higher, then DB would have found a solution much earlier for Brussels - Cologne
Unified ticket format for #CrossBorderRail journeys made on reservable trains
(identical to DB/SBB)
Unified commercial terminology
Common professional qualification for guards/attendants working on #CrossBorderRail (languages, geography, overall offer, unified procedure in case of disruption)
@jon for (8) sanctions would be good, but I'm wondering if they are effective and move the needle in practice? At the end of the day, will there be accountability if the decision-makers of today are not in charge anymore by the 2030 deadline? If there are financial sanctions for states, won't they simply be paid by the taxpayers (and redistributed back to the budget)?
Looking at it from the other side, is there also a missing carrot to build TEN-T (and beyond)? 🙃 I'm no expert in that, so I'm just throwing some questions:
Is funding the blocking issue (as pointed by the Greenpeace report) on which the EU could contribute more? Are the rules too strict to approve railway projects? Are there too many stakeholders (with veto power) involved on each project and who need to reach a consensus (EU, states, regions, cities)? Are environmental benefits of trains properly accounted for in the cost-benefit calculations for each project?
Some concrete examples (I haven't looked in detail nor if they are part of TEN-T): what's blocking the Lyon-Maurienne part of Lyon-Turin? What's blocking the missing Montpellier-Perpignan new (high-speed or mixed) line?
@gendx On 8 - the EU takes states to court regularly for these sorts of things, and fines them. But has not for TEN-T. I have not yet got to the bottom of why not. And what I like about the system is that the EU's rigour on this point is beyond electoral cycles.
@jon for (4) I fear that railways will push and lobby hard to have the "minimum reasonable transfer time" be as large as possible e.g. 30 minutes (because they'll be less accountable for their delays). But that means adding friction for each connection as these buffer times compound even in the (hopefully) common case where there is no delay. If I spend half the time in an expensive high-speed train and half the time waiting for connections, what's the time & price advantage over a car?
I think that this in turn incentivizes the current SNCF model of running very long services without connection (e.g. a Strasbourg-Montpellier with 3 changes in Mulhouse, Dijon and Lyon would be 1h30 longer than a direct one).
But these long trains are an operational nightmare (as any delay propagates to the whole journey of the train on the whole day), and possibly take slots away from regional services (e.g. Strasbourg-Mulhouse could be every 30min instead of every 1h if there was never a TGV on this non-high-speed line?).
I think it'd be useful to find a measure that really incentivizes a connection-oriented system of Taktfahrplan (so both your proposal (6) for coordination, but also something about regular services?). With SBB, it doesn't matter that a 2h trip requires 4 trains, because everything is synchronized and I don't have to plan an extra 1h30 of buffer to make connections. Even if 1 train is delayed, I'll make it in 2h30, or 3h in 99% of the cases. Which is way better than 3h30 with the "minimum required buffer time" for 3 connections.
@gendx This is not as hard as you think. Each network operator sets a minimum time per station already - you just normally do not ever see it as a passenger, but for example I have seen these tables for Czech stations. Now if a network operator (like, say, SNCF Réseau…?) started to get malevolent you might get a problem though.
@jon for (2) I'd add that accuracy, auditability and accountability of the data is important, because it practically matters. For example, SNCF only tracks delays with (at best) 5-minute intervals, and the reality can be off by 15 minutes. Case in point, in the last month, I've been in situations where:
a) A train was planned with a large delay (35 minutes) with tons of notifications by app + SMS, but at the last moment departed earlier (only 25 minutes delay), and I arrived just in time to make it. In the field, the staff was just waiting for the signal to turn green, but that wasn't synchronized with the IT systems. That's not acceptable, even more so when the next train is in 2-3h.
b) A train reached a 3h delay, and the real delay kept increasing up to 3h10, but the app kept it at 3h. These 10 minutes were the difference to miss the last train of the day (and getting a much slower bus instead). Thankfully there was the bus, but if not and I were to take a hotel & file a complaint, would SNCF claim that the delay was only 3h and that they brought me in time for the last connection, so I'm not entitled to compensation for the hotel?
I think you make an interesting point here, the ability to switch to the next available connection is a quality aspect of public transport that is very much under-appreciated.
But I also would caution that a “next” based service or a “reservation” based service are two very distinct products, each with their own pro’s and con’s.
@jon Give all RRs a bonus schedule, if you are in RR management then 25% of your yearly pay should be tied to your RR on time performance, and another 25% to all EU on time performance. You can adjust those numbers a bit in debate, but everyone should feel like delays will hit them personally. Of course you have to be careful that these numbers cannot be gamed by timetable padding (I'd define the speed of cross EU trains at 250km/h including time spent at intermediate stations - hit anyone not providing HSR hard)
@jon I think these are great proposal, with 1-4 & 9 being the most important/feasible in the short term in my opinion. I know 2 is a broad strokes proposal, but a requirement for text in case of large scale disruptions to be in (at least) English would improve things (e.g. DB in their app).
I'm also interested in your thoughts on if/how to include private operators (flixtrain/NTV), non-mainline rail public transit (kehl to strasbourg) and long distance busses (especially in eastern EU)?
Here are some thoughts :
Proposal 2, it should be as well updated in real time because then for proposal 3, we would not need a phone number or an email, we could just select the travel we want to do in a (libre) application and be updated if there is any change through a push notification.
proposal 4 do you mean last train of the day ? There should as well be money compensation if they really can't do it
@jon Then I would prefer to invest in maintenance of infrastructure and material as well as in people so that trains would be on time rather than this proposal, or I don't understand it correctly...how would the railway companies get you to your destination, and what would be the accepted delay ?
@jon ok, it's better than currently, but what if it was the last train, or even if the next train make you miss the next connection and there isn't any next train until the morning ? Will the company need to find and pay your hotel night and pay back as well for the hotel night you had book at your destination?
@jon what if I'm being paid $100k to give a speech and you make me late? (yes some people really get $100k to make a speech, though generally ex-politicians and so I suspect it is just hidden corruption, but that is not relevant to this question). Shouldn't they pay for not getting me there on time? People have places they want to be and sometimes life throws a tight window of when they can travel. Trains cannot be late must be a rule.
@jon people often have no choice about schedule that is forced on them. Yes any transit can be late, my point is it should never happen. Never. Like entire decades between a train being more than 30 seconds late. Trains are not subject to the weather delays of flying, that should be a competitive advantage .
@jon@PGLux@sorenhave not sure I understand this hard/soft distinction. what I want is hard legislation by the EP, like they did with roaming fees for mobile phone companies, like "train companies MUST publish their schedules, and MUST sell tickets from A to B in europe, full stop."
@jon Cross border rail could work much like other European systems: each country pays into a pot, central/federated planning, contracts go to each country according to how much they paid.
@jon If I read 6 and 7, I must say, that this not even works national. And the reason: lobby of railway companies is to strong (or politics not enough interested). In DE supported by EVG. German politics is re-thinking the infrastructure of DB - timetable, information, passenger rights are not real on the actual agenda.
@jon I remain very optimistic about the future for European rail: your proposals are clearly achievable and when implemented will give a real improvement in service.
Thank you for all your work on this and please keep on hammering away at it...
@jon I have some thoughts! Some more practical than others. Love these ideas overall!
First, please get the UK fully involved in all of this. I know my countrymen have made that difficult but I can dream!
Second, for your suggestion 4, what if national operators had to sell through tickets to at least adjacent counties, but there were an EU-wide authority which could sell you tickets for any many-country trips? That authority could even be barred from selling local tickets if needed politically, but they'd be the ones to sell your hypothetical Lisboa to Ventimiglia ticket.
Third, for your suggestion 10 it's important not to fall into the US situation where no new locomotives are being built because the companies are trying to avoid taxes and emissions regulations. I know the EU is on the other end of that pendulum swing, but some care should be put in up front to continue scrapping locomotives which cannot be upgraded to modern emissions standards, and to require the ones that can be upgraded to be upgraded. If everything were electrified then it wouldn't be an issue of course, which leads to...
Fourth, more electrification seems to be an easy thing to add to the list. There should especially be public funding to eliminate breaks in electrification, with a goal of eliminating all regular diesel service in the coming decades. Make a big list of the 40% of non-electrified lines, sorting them by number of trains (or tons of freight?) per day, and then just start at the top stringing up wires. Require conversion of shunters, short-lines, and industrial railways to batteries if catenary isn't practical, and so on.
@jon Electrification could probably come mostly from climate regulation, but having a fund to replace rarely-used equipment that might not otherwise make sense to replace might be worth it. Does the TEN-T plan to eventually cover all lines in all countries, or is it just a "core" network?
@jon amen to all of this, including #11 "Europatakt in 2033 or an effing good reason why not in this or that MS" (but your #6 and #7 would make a "Kerneuropatakt" infectious in practice, which would be great. Get DE-AT-CH who are good at this kick this off, and Eurocontrol neighbouring networks provide an incentive to align anyway?)
#4 lots of devil in the details. Would need to find really good criteria to define what is a "valid" connection in a way that leaves no room for foot-dragging. \
@jon I like the "hop on next train" guarantee the most. If the timetable app shows that this is currently the fastest route to your final destination, you should be able to take it.
Should be relatively easy to implement, and would eliminate the absolute worst experiences in cross-border travel.
The fact that item (2) is necessary is scandalous. Publicly funded railways should be under an obligation to make all their timetable and journey-planning data freely available in a standardised format. If the UK can do it, so can RENFE and the other culprits.
@jon I do hope you get elected to the EP. We need elected politicians to tell publicly funded rail organisations: "this is not your private data, the public have already paid for it, we require you to publish it".
@royalrex@jon The state-owned railways have been told that they have to compete. They think that hoarding data gives them some sort of advantage. But the real competition is with cars and planes, and the rail operators won't win that competition unless they make it less painful to book journeys, especially international and multi-modal and multi-operator trips.
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