One journey, one ticket, full rights – Simplifying train travel in Europe is the new initiative of EU announced by EU commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas. New rules shall make seamless travel across Europe a reality. The three proposals adopted today simplify planning and booking for regional, long-distance and cross-border travel, particularly for rail journeys involving multiple operators.
Currently, travelers must book by different means each part of the trip from a relevant operator, something that was not necessary before the liberalization of railway traffic where each national railway could establish tickets cross-border. A traveler from Rouen in France to Würzburg in Germany might have to buy one ticket from the French Railway SNCF to Lille, another one from Eurostar to Cologne and a third one from German railway to Würzburg.
Now, countries need to implement the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive’s rules on sharing multimodal transport data on national access points.
The Commission will submit the proposed regulations to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament for consideration under the ordinary legislative procedure. The initiative is part of the political guidelines of the current President and the mission letter to the commissioner for Transport.
North Macedonia should apply these regulations as well. Currently, the only known way to obtain integrated information about rail connections is the independent Rome2Rio.com website while neither Greek nor Serbian railways indicate connections. The EU RGF regional growth facility for North Macedonia would provide financial incentives to the country in case a railway reform would be realized.
BMBC has extensively reported on Macedonian Railway timetables and tariffs here.
EU press release on the “One Journey, one ticket, full rights” initiative
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