Public transport journey planning has a public purpose - get people efficiently to their destination.
This planning function might not have financial compensation - there might be no ticket sale involved.
The likes of Trainline then have very little incentive as I see it to provide excellent journey planning. But if they can’t, and the likes of DB won’t, internationally… then who can?
@jon Here's one option: an EU agency tasked with achieving modal shift from cars and planes to buses and trains. In a similar way to National Rail Enquiries in the UK, it would offer a journey planning facility, and would provide vendor-neutral information on all publicly available fares.
It would be so attractive to use that rail operators and ticket sellers would demand to be included so that they didn't miss out on the increased sales and traffic.
@sccook@jon Good idea. This could be a task for the EU Agency for Railways (ERA) but I’m not sure they should be running the actual planner.
I think it would be better for the ERA to act as the data hub. All players that wish to take part send their data to the ERA. They clean it up, repackage it, and then make it available via an API for the market to develop products around.
There are numerous examples of public bodies doing precisely this.
@jon@sccook A new law if you want to make it compulsory to share the data.
I read the suggestion as not making data sharing compulsory but letting competition sort it out as operators don’t want to lose out on extra income. Especially not if open access operators are the first ones out of the gate with providing data.
You could then, later, consider making data sharing compulsory if there are obvious (or crucial) stragglers.
And a #Europa-wide one, of course, on the large scale.
And, on the small scale, it should be integrating #MobilityAsAService#MaaS tools, that include not only #trains and #bus, but also #bike self-service rentals and their car equivalent #carsharing (not to be confused with #carpooling services, which can also be included btw)
@jon no, that’s forgetting about ad supported business models and convenience - Google flights, kayak and skyscanner exist even though you often can save a couple of euros if you book directly with the airline
@jon this is an essence of a long fight between seznam.cz against transport ministry & then-private operator of Idos, with ministry in penny-wise pound-foolish way insisting on Idos/chaps only having to provide freely just human-readable static schedules and Idos the web interface because it did the data gathering & processing for free...
@jon One angle to this problem is: what makes it work for road navigation & flights, and why is that not applicable to rail? Listing some thoughts.
Economically (for the routing services):
Road: routing apps are provided essentially for free, and funded indirectly. For example, having a mapping application with directions is table stakes for a smartphone manufacturer, in order to sell their hardware. But the B2C demand of long-distance rail is lower than road so that's not table stakes.
Flights: B2C price comparators don't operate on a huge margin (I guess?), but take a commission on sales and there's a bunch of competing comparators (pushing quality up?). Also there's money to make on B2B integrations with large companies.
As long as the B2C & B2B demand is much higher on road/flights than rail, the supply of good rail planning (from private companies) won't follow?
@jon Same question as always – why does it work for flights? Ticket commissions? Or is there a regulation that airlines have to publish their timetables (not real-time info though; for that you have to go to yet other sites that have all the info)
In aviation, a model emerged with a middle layer between airlines and travel agents. Much as the airlines would love to get rid of it, they can’t because their best customers – big companies – rely on it.
In the European state railway system, the local railways sold all tickets for all other railways, so no middle layer was needed. The system they had set up eventually broke down with yield pricing, but it was never aimed at third parties to begin with.
@kupfers the route planning is simpler. There are fewer ways to your destination than by rail. And in the 1990s the EU forcibly opened the ticket sales market.
@jon it's so dumb isn't it? Do I use planning apps to buy tickets? No. Do I spend a shed load of money in the European cities that I use it to travel to? Yes. The share of the cost from each country would be peanuts
@jon@25kV this is part of the intent of the EC Green Agenda DG Move discussion about the change to the TSI regulation that is being pushed through by May 2024
It is making some folk (particularly "malevolent" ones) v unhappy
@schotanus@jon If a private business is running a monopoly like service, then their incentive is to cut costs, not provide a better service. As people can't immediately go elsewhere, and sales won't change much.
@schotanus@jon If passengers can't choose a different service for a journey, as one company has the franchise, that is monopolistic. And you rely on their priorities. It's the same with a public organisation. But their priorities can be defined to be in the interests of passengers and not shareholders.
@ianp5a@jon Sure, the operation of a line is done by one single operator. But they needn’t do planning/sales.
You can plan your trip in Google Maps or buy it at Trainline. If the operators provide the timetables and enable resales, then competition for the planning/sales part is entirely possible.
@jon It shouldn’t cost more money to add Rodalies than a sales agent will gain by adding them. I think it’s perfectly reasonable they can earn a fee by selling the tickets.
@jon The simple Swiss way is that the trains from all major cities leave around the full and half hour... In a good public transport system, you don't even need to plan, you just go to the station and take the next train.
@jon if rail was a publicly owned service, then the incentive would be to give people the most efficient routes so as to maximise the availability of space for other passengers
Yet another reason that privately owned rail is a bad system
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