Post by T&E

Our latest rail report shows how booking a cross-border rail ticket in Europe can be an odyssey. Passengers must often shift booking platforms to get tickets for every leg of their trip or to see all existing rail services. This doesn’t just put travellers off trains, but can also make them pay more than they need to for tickets. Typically, this happens in two different situations: 1️⃣ When a booking platform doesn’t show all existing rail services, making passengers miss the opportunity to consider the cheaper travelling options. 2️⃣ When tickets for the same service have a different cost depending on the booking platform. We find that travellers can pay up to 6 times more for their tickets. Both situations show severe shortcomings in rail ticketing across Europe. But the good news is that the upcoming EU’s Single Ticketing Package that the European Commission is due to present next month can fix this. This isn’t a totally new idea either. A law proposed in France recently would require the French state rail company SNCF to sell all their willing competitor tickets on their website – like a Trenitalia journey from Paris to Marseille, for example. If passed, this would be a huge win for people looking to travel within France but experiencing issues finding all the available options. This carousel explains how the system is flawed, and what we can do about it 👇 #railticketing #singleticketingpackage