EU Passenger Package: a golden opportunity to maximise green travel

The EU Passenger Package is a big leap forward to passenger rights, and presents vast progress in dragging European rail ticketing out of the stone age and helping people switch from cars to trains. However the geographical scope of the proposals is limited in effect to neighbouring countries. This risks limiting the modal shift potential from air to rail, which could hinder the EU meeting its climate targets. Transport remains the EU’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and unlike other sectors, since 1990 these emissions have continued to rise in recent decades. Aviation is the largest growing source of emissions, and road transport still accounts for the majority of transport emissions in the EU. Therefore it is crucial to enable the conditions for rail, Europe’s greenest mass market transport mode to be maximized in upstream and downstream measures such as the EU Passenger Package.

Expanding the geographical scope for the single ticket, the EU Passenger Package would expand passenger rights and the simplification of booking, making train travel more attractive to passengers. The Commission’s current proposal is a good first step towards this. Convenience matters in a modern digital world and the rail sector must keep up. T&E commissioned polling found that 61% of respondents were put off taking long distance journeys at least once because the booking process was too complicated.

Changing major platform practice on ticketing is important. The majority of passengers use incumbent rail operators booking websites. For instance in France, 9 out 10 rail tickets are sold by SNCF connect. Considering their market dominance, it is crucial that these platforms display and sell through tickets for long-distance journeys in order to encourage more passengers to take long distance rail journeys over flights.

However, the hosting obligation’s international geographical scope is so small that the potential to encourage modal shift from air travel is limited. As our research demonstrates, many of rail equivalent journeys of the most flown routes across the EU will not be bookable with a single ticket, and therefore passengers won’t necessarily have passenger rights protected. This makes international rail travel less attractive than alternative flight routes, and limits the success of other flagship EU Rail initiatives such as the High Speed Rail Plan.

The EU must harmonize the EU Passenger Package and High Speed Rail Plan by extending the hosting obligation to capital cities under 1500km with maximum 2 changes, where there is an available rail route. For example Brussels to Madrid would count as one of these routes. SNCF, SNCB and Renfe would all be required to sell this route.

Key recommendations:

In the context of limited booking horizons, and the reality that operators sell their tickets at different times: some in advance, some with limited notice, this proposal is a sure-fast way of ensuring that multi-operator tickets are genuinely protected as the legislation is intended for.

For this new regulation to fully deliver, its scope needs to be revised to cover passengers who have bought their ticket on one platform, not just those who have bought their tickets in a single transaction. Otherwise, there is a risk that this new regulation will create different, unequal rights for passengers, depending on where and when they book their tickets.

For example, if someone is travelling from Paris to Madrid, my SNCF ticket might be available six months in advance, but the Renfe ticket for the Barcelona to Madrid ticket may not be ready until five months before the journey (assuming the booking horizon amendments are approved). Passengers should be able to book the entire journey on Trainline, and simply update the ticket when travelling on the same continuous journey over the course of a day or night and maintain their passenger rights, as well as keeping the journey as a single ticket for convenience. 

There is a risk that this new regulation will create different, unequal rights for passengers, depending on where they book their tickets.

Key recommendation:

What is being currently proposed is very similar to the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC), although it covers all operators covered in the single ticket purchase. However the next available journey is likely to be operated by a railway undertaking not covered by the single ticket. For example, if the passenger is travelling from Brussels to Milan, and theBrussels to Paris train is late, the passenger should be able to get on the Trenitalia France train to Milan as opposed to waiting another however many hours for the next SNCF to Milan. This would make the journey a lot more convenient for passengers, and may well save money for the operators who would be at risk of having to pay for passengers accommodation should they miss the last train for example.

Key recommendation: