[Charles-P]

The rail industry is still very much behind air travel with real transparency of pricing. It is a coincidence but only yesterday here in Belgium the national rail operator announced for the first time that it was releasing it ticketing info via the OpenBelgium project. It has taken years of campaigning to get them to even consider this.

[AMcWhirter]

Update. Eurostar is now saying that it plans to introduce the Siemens trainsets on the London-Brussels route from May.

Unclear as to whether approval has already been granted or whether it expects to gain approval by May.

Certainly Eurostar will have to gain approval fairly soon because the Siemens trainsets are rostered for London-Amsterdam when it starts.

[LuganoPirate]

My point exactly Martyn. Go to your local station and ask for a return to Freiburg and the ticket office will look at you as if you came from outer space! But, go to a local station in Switzerland and they’ll look up the best offers and issue the ticket there and then.

In Continental Europe business travel by train is the norm. Day passes, half fare passes, interrail discounts, super saver tickets are all available online or in a ticket office. Free travel for children with an adult is quite usual. Most people going to Rome from Milan now use the train. Germans, Dutch, French all use train travel for business leaving their cars at home. Most stations have cheap and easy parking so Europe is really geared up for fast train travel at reasonable prices.

It seems the UK is great (if expensive) for train travel within the UK, but beyond the borders and under the channel, it’s a big no no I’m afraid, and what a pity. The Channel tunnel is great but travel through it should be easy and inexpensive – and the fact that most of the debt to build it was written off by the banks, reinforces that. That it’s not is, in my opinion, close to criminal.

[Author]

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