The really simple guide to what we need to fix in EU wide rail ticketing, and how

I have just been in a focus group for an academic project about cross border railways in Europe, and ticketing was one of the aspects of it. Some of the others in the discussion were ticketing people from state owned railways, some from rivals to state incumbents, and some from third party ticketing platforms. But all the ticketing people were beating about the bush and either do not understand the point, or are willfully obfuscating.

With EU legislation on this on the way this year, we need to get a few things clear on this.

First, what do we need?

We need a tool (or tools) on which you can plan and book every train, everywhere in the EU, for the best price and without extra booking fees. During your journey live running data will be provided for you. And if something goes wrong, the tool will be able to offer you the systems to provide you compensation.

How do you get that?

You need data. Timetable data from all the railway companies (we are almost there through MERITS and National Access Points), and ticketing data from all the railway companies – but here is where it gets tricky.

Who has to provide data to whom?

My preferred solution is to place a data sharing obligation on all railway companies, big and small, private or state owned, to share their entire real time ticketing inventory with any third party that wants it, and on fair terms. No exceptions. That would mean anyone – be it Deutsche Bahn or Trainline – could build the kick ass train booking platform of the future – that complies with what we need stated above.

The alternative solution – one I do not favour – is placing a reselling obligation on incumbent sales platforms. That would mean, for example, forcing Deutsche Bahn to sell Flixtrain or European Sleeper in DB Navigator. It might also work, but I am a liberal here – I want to let whoever builds the best tool win out.

You have to do one or the other (or maybe both would also work), but doing neither means you do not solve the problem.

Then you need to extend the data sharing obligation to live running data, and sort out the rules for compensation for multi operator journeys.

And that is pretty much it.

Everything else is secondary. OSDM, so lauded by the railway companies, is solving a different problem – it allows railway firms to more easily and more cheaply share data with each other. But even were Deutsche Bahn to technically more easily be able to sell Flixtrain than before, it still will not, because unless it is forced to it will not. Sure, we can have discussions about the exact definition of fair terms, and what obligations there are the other way – from platforms to operators. And look-to-book API ratios. But all of that distracts from the central problem as outlined above.

Until you have answered who is forced to share what, with whom, you do not solve this problem.

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