It will soon be possible to book your international train journey with one click. This was promised by the coming European Commissioner for Transport on 4 November, during the European Parliament hearing on his candidacy. Apostolos Tzitzikostas stressed that ‘it is unbelievable that we do not have this by 2024’. In 2025, he will come up with a legislative proposal to regulate it.
Convenience for rail passengers
This is a big step forward for European rail travellers. No more spending hours puzzling over alternative times, routes, carriers and costs to train from Utrecht to Rome, for example. No more buying multiple tickets and reservations from different companies. Buying an international train ticket will become as easy as booking a plane ticket.
More competition between companies
Apart from the convenience for travellers, the ‘one-click booking system’ also creates more competition on the railways. It encourages better connections between different carriers and better services. But a revolution is needed behind the scenes of railway companies. They will have to share their transport data, which they currently regard as a trade secret. They will have to support the creation of an independent rail planner for passengers that does not favour routes belonging to their own company. They will have to accept that allocation of rail capacity will partly be done by a neutral European rail authority, giving competitors a fair chance. They will have to agree on sharing compensation to passengers for a delayed arrival at the final destination. In short: the closed strongholds of the national railway companies will have to open up.
Only Europe can regulate this
This provokes resistance. Therefore, I understand that we do not yet have a simple booking system. Railway companies, like other companies, focus on their own interests, even though about a third of their costs are covered by subsidies. Why run trains, giving more passengers to connecting trains of other carriers? Only the European Union can break through this mishmash of national and corporate interests, putting the international rail passenger first. In this, Commissioner-designate Tzitzikostas needs all the help he can get. Europe managed to get the universal phone charger through, so it should be possible with train tickets too.
Modest environmental benefit
Europe's ‘one-click booking system’ is great for rail travellers but will do little to reduce environmental pollution from aviation. Intra-European aviation's CO2 emissions will fall by six to eleven percent, after big improvements in international rail which would then have to carry fifty percent more passengers. See my study Air2Rail.
