Today the European Commission released its “plan to accelerate high-speed rail across Europe” (press release here). Only it’s not a plan. And Community of European Railways (CER), the state owned railways’ trade body, stated this will “revolutionise the way travel distances are perceived in Europe” (press release here). Only this […]
European Union
SNCF’s half hearted effort to support international night trains in danger of hitting the buffers
In December 2023 the Paris-Berlin night train re-started after a 9 year hiatus. Operated as a Nighjet service by ÖBB, SNCF provided motive power for the train from Mannheim to Paris. They even put SNCF stickers on some of the carriages, and ÖBB lauded the launch of the service as […]
Building a machine-translated railway news aggregator
One of the side effects of the fracturing of the social media landscape has been it has become harder to follow breaking news that has niche importance. If it’s the big questions of war and peace, sure, we all still see it. But what is happening in European railways – […]
Green Signals podcast about rivals to Eurostar, and some further thoughts about the challengers
I was a guest this week on the Green Signals podcast about rivals to Eurostar and their chances of success. You can watch it here: You can likewise get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Also – amazingly! – the comments on Youtube are mostly constructive. That is […]
Does a railway operator need to know about all the legs of my journey so as to offer me passenger rights?
One of the most interesting discussions provoked by my previous post about the European Commission’s passenger rights consultation was whether a railway operator really needs to know about my whole journey to be able to offer me passenger rights. Oliver Blanthorn and Cycling on Rails – two of the cleverest people […]
Mapy.com – the map app for everything?
This summer’s #CrossBorderRail Finale tour was the first I did without using Komoot as my bike mapping tool. Read the post I wrote before the tour for the background as to why I wanted to switch. Now after having been using Mapy.com as my alternative for more than 1000km of […]
