Latest news with #JonWorth
Daily Mirror
11-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
'I lost my mind taking the train to Spain - there are three problems'
To TGV or not to TGV. That is the question, at least when considering whether to take the environmentally friendlier option to Spain. It is (almost always) much greener to catch a train than hop on a plane. The stats are clear. At its very worst, the overall climate impact of flying can be over 80 times worse than taking a train, if the non-CO₂ effects of air travel (such as NOx and water vapour) are included. Planes emit, on average, 4.84 times more greenhouse gas emissions than trains, according to data from the European Environment Agency. But that is, of course, not the only part of the equation. Riding the rails from London to Madrid—as I did at the beginning of July, when the fiercely hot tendrils of the heatwave were still wrapped around France and Spain—proved possible in just one day. But only just. A 6am Eurostar out of St Pancras, followed by a small hop across Paris and then a javelin-like race through the tinderbox-dry French and Spanish countryside, gets you to Madrid before midnight. Flying, however, takes about five hours door to door, if you live within an hour of a major airport. So, about a third of the time of the rail alternative. Despite the train taking so much longer, it would be a tough decision to make if the prices weren't similarly out of whack. It is a tragedy to admit that my one-way ticket from the British to the Spanish capital cost around £400. On the same day, booked a couple of months in advance, flying costs a tenth of that price with Ryanair or easyJet. Flying might cost a lot less financial, but the environment is paying the difference. A journey from London to Madrid would emit 43kg (95lb) of CO₂ per passenger by train, but 118kg by plane (or 265kg if non-CO₂ emissions are included), according to EcoPassenger. I embarked on this journey hoping to report back that slow travel to Spain is worth the extra time and cash cost. "Sure, you may arrive a little later, but think how fattened and enriched you'll be by all those hours of croissant eating, Le Monde reading and view regarding." At the end of the first leg, I could offer no such conclusion. 36°C is too hot for a day-long train ride. A day is too long. £400 is too much. Not destroying the planet is cool—but so is not having a hernia while trying to make your hotspot work for an hour in the middle of the workday, somewhere around Béziers. There are a few too many problems with train travel for it to be the true utopian version of clean, sophisticated, continent-straddling travel that I so want it to be. For one, internet on the train is patchy, often too slow, and usually overloaded. The reasons for this are many, as I've previously written about. Happily, Labour made a big commitment to address this in the UK last month. The bigger problem is the one pushing people from trains to planes: the price. Jon Worth, a rail campaigner and train consultant, is a huge advocate of taking the train. He spoke to the Mirror from a carriage on the Slovakian-Hungarian border and described the route from the UK to Spain as "eye-wateringly expensive." "Eurostar is a fortune, and Paris - Barcelona too, because Eurostar and SNCF, respectively, are keeping supply (the number of trains) low to keep the ticket prices high. There are only two Paris to Barcelona services a day, year-round, and a third one in summer," he explained. According to Jon, rail companies need to add more services to increase supply and competition, and governments should encourage and allow them to do so. "The crux is basically this: do I expect passengers to take a train for nine hours instead of flying? No. Is ticket cost a problem? Yes, absolutely! BUT rail firms could do a hell of a lot better with their existing infrastructure - especially France to its neighbouring countries - to run more trains on routes where rail is already time competitive," he continued. "You need to up the supply so as to drive down ticket costs. You need more trains. And then we start to get somewhere." Jon suggested that the time it takes to get to Spain on the rails means few currently consider it an option. However, that might not be the case for those signed up to Climate Perks—a scheme that gives employees extra annual leave if they take the train rather than a plane on holiday. The organisation behind it can help you convince your company to sign up if you're interested. When the time pressure is off and the work laptop has been put away, train journeys can be pure bliss. Once the heatwave had eased off a little and my hot-spotting woes were a mere bad memory, the joy I had sipping black coffee while whizzing through the desert-like countryside on a Renfe train to Madrid beat any experience I've ever had on a plane. If you do have the time and laid-back attitude to properly enjoy the train, then RailEurope is one of the best ways to arrange and book it. "Taking the train from the UK to Spain is no longer a niche choice — it's a smart and increasingly popular way to travel. At Rail Europe, we bring together over 250 rail operators on one platform, including Eurostar, SNCF and Renfe, so travellers can book international journeys easily and in one place," the company's CEO Björn Bender told the Mirror. "The most common route is London to Paris by Eurostar, then a direct TGV or AVE to Barcelona or Madrid. From there, connections to Seville, Valencia or the coast are simple. We show live schedules, handle multiple currencies, and offer mobile tickets — so what seems complex becomes seamless." Björn recommended getting an Interrail Pass to keep the costs down. A four-day pass is available for £183 on RailEurope's website, although you will have to pay a reservation fee and book ahead in plenty of time to get onto the Eurostar. "For flexible or multi-stop trips, the Interrail Pass is a great option for European residents. It gives you freedom to explore Spain and beyond by train, at your own pace," the rail boss added. "Trains offer more legroom, fewer queues and city-centre arrivals — but the real difference is how the journey feels. You see the landscapes change, avoid airport stress, and travel in a way that's more relaxed, more connected. "Environmentally, the impact speaks for itself: trains can emit up to 20 times less CO₂ than planes. Swapping short-haul flights or car rentals for rail is one of the easiest ways to cut your footprint — without giving up comfort or convenience. That's what we focus on at Rail Europe: making sustainable travel both practical and enjoyable. "More and more people want to move like locals, not tourists. Trains let you do that — reaching small towns, cultural hubs and places you'd never fly to, all while following the everyday rhythm of Europe. And in terms of time? That's the irony: people think trains are slower — but rail gives you time back. Time to read, to relax, to think. No long security lines, no airport transfers, no stress. Just a smoother, more human way to travel."
Irish Examiner
11-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Europe was promised a new golden age of the night train. Why are we still waiting?
As Europeans woke up to the joy of travel post-lockdown, it looked as though we were in store for a resurgence of continent-crossing night trains. Sleeper train fans hailed a 'night train renaissance' and a 'rail revolution', combining some of the nostalgia for an old way of travelling with modern climate and sustainable transport concerns. The long-distance European train journey might be slower than a short-haul flight, but it is surely better in terms of the environment and the traveller experience. For those on a budget, the prospect of saving on a night in a hotel appeals too. But as anyone who has tried to plan a holiday train trip for this summer is likely to have found, night trains are still few and far between, especially in western Europe. And if there is a night train at all on a route, it will often be booked up months in advance. That's not all: reliability and onboard service are often not up to scratch, with carriages on many routes pushing 50 years old. The traditional behemoths of European rail — France's SNCF, Germany's Deutsche Bahn and Spain's Renfe — have little or no interest in the night-train market, preferring more profitable high-speed daytime trains instead. Only Austria's ÖBB has bucked the trend, ordering a fleet of 33 new trains for its Nightjet service. For comparison, Deutsche Bahn owns almost 300 high-speed daytime trains. Night services remain a drop in the ocean. Now Nox, a Berlin-based private start-up, has announced plans it claims will change all that and blow open the night-train market with a radical rethink of the passenger experience. No more old or secondhand carriages — Nox says it intends to build a new fleet. No more asking travellers to share with snoring strangers in couchettes either: the fleet will have only one- and two-person compartments, albeit rather small ones. Pilot services are due to start in 2027 and regular operations by the end of the decade. This approach on the key question is right — the only way to offer more night-train routes is to build new trains. But Nox will not be the first newcomer to try to crack this market. Midnight Trains, a Paris-based start-up, promised hotels on wheels in 2021, but investors were not convinced and the venture folded. Dutch operation GoVolta has been unable to turn a successful air-package travel business into the equivalent on rail. European Sleeper, which also launched in 2021, has done a little better — its motley collection of elderly carriages runs three times a week from Brussels via Amsterdam and Berlin to Prague, but without new carriages the company will remain tiny. Jon Worth: 'It is time for the EU to provide financial guarantees for acquisitions of new night-train carriages, and make those guarantees available to both privately owned and state-owned companies.' While Nox, like its predecessors, faces an uphill struggle, in a few ways it is different. Its plan to rethink the layout of a night-train carriage, making it more appealing to modern travellers — and safer for women — makes sense. Standardisation — all the carriages will be the same — keeps operations simple. One of the founders previously worked for FlixBus's rail arm, FlixTrain, in Germany, so there is genuine railway experience. Efforts by any private operator to solve the night-train puzzle are welcome, but the problem ultimately is political. And as most European countries are too small for national night trains, that means solving these issues EU-wide. The European Commission, in a 2021 report, flagged a dozen routes where night trains would make economic sense but currently do not run. Yet, in the years since then, no action has been taken. Brussels is steadily working to harmonise diverging national rules that make running international trains such a hassle. But night trains — locomotive hauled, medium speed and running at night when track capacity is easier to obtain — arguably face fewer hurdles than other train types. It is time for the EU to provide financial guarantees for acquisitions of new night-train carriages, and make those guarantees available to both privately owned and state-owned companies. With at least half a dozen train manufacturers in the EU, it could be a boon to European industry as well. And the requirement from the commission in return would be Europe-wide compatibility — that guarantees would only be for go-anywhere carriages that can be deployed anywhere from Barcelona to Bodø, Stockholm to Sofia. So, this summer, as you stand in interminable queues at an airport, or stare at the bumper of the car ahead of you in a traffic jam, remember all of this could be better. A night-train renaissance could get you to your holiday destination more comfortably and more sustainably. The EU's actions on international rail lag behind its rhetoric. Building more night-train carriages to run more services on tracks already there should be a no-brainer. Jon Worth is an independent campaigner and writer about European railways This piece was originally published in The Guardian
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Europe wants seamless international train travel. Deutsche Bahn says it's getting there
This autumn, Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany's national railway company, will begin rolling out a new digital infrastructure that it says will streamline international rail bookings. The move is part of a long-awaited push to simplify travel across Europe's patchwork of national railway networks. '[You will] be able to book an international journey just as easily as a domestic one,' Michael Peterson, DB's board member for long-distance transport, told German press agency DPA. 'This brings us closer to a major goal,' he continued: seamless cross-border rail travel across Europe, powered by a unified digital system and regulations backed by the EU. Starting this autumn, DB will adopt a new data-sharing standard known as OSDM (Open Sales and Distribution Model). This EU-endorsed interface is intended to give European rail operators instant access to each other's ticketing systems. Using the OSDM as a framework, DB says it aims to offer integrated ticketing for virtually all major European railways by the end of 2026, including local transport, through its website and DB Navigator app. Rail expert Jon Worth is quick to point out that this will not be a single ticket, but rather 'a better way to stitch together tickets from different railways,' however. DB will initially integrate with Austria and Switzerland's national operators – the ÖBB and SBB, respectively – with other operators to follow in the coming months. Currently, booking international train tickets through DB's platform can be confusing, limited and, in many cases, expensive. While passengers can already buy some cross-border tickets running through Germany, many popular routes still require piecing together fares from different companies or making sense of multiple national rail sites. No single rail provider can cover a journey from Berlin to Barcelona, for example. Aside from convenience, the new system could begin to address a gap in passenger rights. Currently, travellers using separate tickets for different legs of a cross-border trip risk losing protection if a delay causes a missed connection. Addressing this issue – and ensuring full passenger rights throughout the journey, including rebooking and reimbursement – is such a priority that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has made it a cornerstone of her second term. 'Cross-border train travel is still too difficult for many citizens,' she wrote in 2024. 'People should be able to use open booking systems to purchase trans-European journeys with several providers, without losing their right to reimbursement or compensatory travel.' Related Taking the train can be almost twice as fast as flying for some journeys in France Journey through the rainforest in luxury on Malaysia's last remaining sleeper train But such protection isn't yet guaranteed. Worth says that the OSDM doesn't compel rail operators to sell unified tickets. It also doesn't ensure consistent enforcement of passenger rights. 'What DB is doing is welcome for Germany, in particular, but it is insufficient,' he explains. 'To get genuine portals on which you can book any train anywhere in Europe, we need more than a technical standard – which is what DB is implementing, essentially – but [rather] binding rules for data sharing, commissions for ticket re-sale and better passenger rights if something goes wrong in a multi-operator rail journey.' The initiative comes amid increasing pressure from Brussels. EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas has said he plans to propose legislation to create unified platforms and make full passenger rights mandatory. That's causing some concern for DB – 'already one of the best' rail operators in Europe, according to Worth. Related The European tube: Inside the project to launch a continent-wide rail system New Madrid-Lisbon high-speed train to cut journey time from 10 hours to three Peterson warned that a digital standard other than the OSDM could undermine years of investment. 'That costs money, that costs time,' he said. Despite the lingering challenges, DB is optimistic. The company recently launched a direct high-speed ICE route between Berlin and Paris and plans further expansions. In 2024, DB also saw a 22 per cent increase in cross-border ticket sales compared to pre-pandemic levels – its best year yet. Now, with better tools, more collaboration and upcoming legislation, Europe's railways could finally begin to catch up with the expectations of climate-conscious travellers – and deliver on the promise of a truly connected continent.
Euronews
28-05-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Easier cross-border train travel? Deutsche Bahn says it's coming
This autumn, Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany's national railway company, will begin rolling out a new digital infrastructure that it says will streamline international rail bookings. The move is part of a long-awaited push to simplify travel across Europe's patchwork of national railway networks. '[You will] be able to book an international journey just as easily as a domestic one,' Michael Peterson, DB's board member for long-distance transport, told German press agency DPA. 'This brings us closer to a major goal,' he continued: seamless cross-border rail travel across Europe, powered by a unified digital system and regulations backed by the EU. Starting this autumn, DB will adopt a new data-sharing standard known as OSDM (Open Sales and Distribution Model). This EU-endorsed interface is intended to give European rail operators instant access to each other's ticketing systems. Using the OSDM as a framework, DB says it aims to offer integrated ticketing for virtually all major European railways by the end of 2026, including local transport, through its website and DB Navigator app. Rail expert Jon Worth is quick to point out that this will not be a single ticket, but rather 'a better way to stitch together tickets from different railways,' however. Hey hoSeems the German media is having another "ooooh the railways are finally sorting their booking systems" round of articles todaySee Tagesschau and N-TV This is NOT ALL THAT IS SEEMS 🚨Quick #CrossBorderRail🧵[image or embed] DB will initially integrate with Austria and Switzerland's national operators – the ÖBB and SBB, respectively – with other operators to follow in the coming months. Currently, booking international train tickets through DB's platform can be confusing, limited and, in many cases, expensive. While passengers can already buy some cross-border tickets running through Germany, many popular routes still require piecing together fares from different companies or making sense of multiple national rail sites. No single rail provider can cover a journey from Berlin to Barcelona, for example. Aside from convenience, the new system could begin to address a gap in passenger rights. Currently, travellers using separate tickets for different legs of a cross-border trip risk losing protection if a delay causes a missed connection. Addressing this issue – and ensuring full passenger rights throughout the journey, including rebooking and reimbursement – is such a priority that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has made it a cornerstone of her second term. 'Cross-border train travel is still too difficult for many citizens,' she wrote in 2024. 'People should be able to use open booking systems to purchase trans-European journeys with several providers, without losing their right to reimbursement or compensatory travel.' But such protection isn't yet guaranteed. Worth says that the OSDM doesn't compel rail operators to sell unified tickets. It also doesn't ensure consistent enforcement of passenger rights. 'What DB is doing is welcome for Germany, in particular, but it is insufficient,' he explains. 'To get genuine portals on which you can book any train anywhere in Europe, we need more than a technical standard – which is what DB is implementing, essentially – but [rather] binding rules for data sharing, commissions for ticket re-sale and better passenger rights if something goes wrong in a multi-operator rail journey.' The initiative comes amid increasing pressure from Brussels. EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas has said he plans to propose legislation to create unified platforms and make full passenger rights mandatory. That's causing some concern for DB – 'already one of the best' rail operators in Europe, according to Worth. Peterson warned that a digital standard other than the OSDM could undermine years of investment. 'That costs money, that costs time,' he said. Despite the lingering challenges, DB is optimistic. The company recently launched a direct high-speed ICE route between Berlin and Paris and plans further expansions. In 2024, DB also saw a 22 per cent increase in cross-border ticket sales compared to pre-pandemic levels – its best year yet. Now, with better tools, more collaboration and upcoming legislation, Europe's railways could finally begin to catch up with the expectations of climate-conscious travellers – and deliver on the promise of a truly connected continent.
