The European Union plans to create a Europe-wide rail ticketing system to make international travel by train easier and more competitive with flying.
The unified platform would cut across the dozens of booking systems now in use, and which can often require multiple tickets for a single cross-border journey.
EU Transport Commissioner-designate Apostolos Tzitzikostas told a hearing on November 5 that he hopes to launch a unified system by next year, saying “It is unbelievable that we do not have this in 2024.
It’s not the first time a unified platform has been proposed; in fact this is a more modest plan that the one proposed in 2021 by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. That plan would
In 2021, the current EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen introduced a plan for a platform where travelers could book all their transportation in one place—trains, flights, rental cars, buses, and even e-scooters, and where transport companies would share data in a standard format to make this possible. It died in the face of rail operators who feared competition, airlines that resisted increased regulation and concern that it might put more power in the hands of large private booking companies.
Photo by Alexander Bagno on Unsplash
