Transparency remains pivotal for cross-service ticket distribution
Seamless ticket booking across different services in the form of a one-stop shop service is still far from being implemented effectively in European rail. Despite the EU initiative for a Single Standard for Ticket Distribution, industry representatives stress that it could end up being a fiasco if the right regulatory measures are not in place.
The Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants in Europe (ALLRAIL) highlighted that since European passengers pay approximately 73 billion euros on rail annually and 64 per cent of the services are subsidised, they also have the right to transparency regarding ticket booking.
“EU citizens should have the right to full transparency; one single standard for distribution helps, but there must also be regulatory action: All passenger rail options sold at all rail ticket vendors,” underlined the representative body, also stressing that without implementing one-stop-shop solutions the ticketing single standard risks becoming a pointless solution that will cost excessive time and money to the EU with no palpable results.
Services still obscured
ALLRAIL also provides some examples to justify the urge for more regulatory measures in this field. For instance, claims the association, “across Europe, there are still many reasonable rail journeys that cannot be booked. For example, there is an hourly, cheaper connection between Brussels to Cologne on subsidised Public Service Obligation (PSO) trains, covering the 224 km distance in around 3 hours”.
However, they continue, passengers cannot search or book this connection easily at the same ticket vendor–instead they need to put the journey together in separate bookings. Even this option, though, remains iunknown to the majority of commuters.
In return, the representative body provides a two-fold solution to tackle this issue: the first part entails the utilisation of Transmodel NeTEx, a ticketing standard that enables full transparency and that should be deployed through the next revision of the Telematic Application for Passenger Service TSIs.
The second part focuses more on the regulatory side of things. Specifically, ALLRAIL claimed that the upcoming EU Multimodal Digital Mobility Services (MDMS) initiative must ensure that all rail services are shown and sold at all rail ticket vendors.
Nick Brooks, ALLRAIL’s secretary general, concluded: “It is crucial that technical and regulatory issues regarding ticketing are dealt with at the same time. Otherwise, many existing rail services will remain hidden, and the whole effort will be pointless”.
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