There are 30 countries with their own national railway and ticketing and fare systems and a dozen or so independent train operators with their stand-alone ticketing systems. Buying a cross-border train trip can be a nightmare (Photo: Karl Baron/Flickr)

Investigation

Why are cross-country train tickets in EU still so complex?

Investigations

by Laure Brillaud, Sigrid Melchior and Manuel Rico, Brussels/Madrid,

When travelling from Copenhagen to Warsaw or Lisbon to Marseille, many people choose the plane over the train. The ticket price is a major factor - and so is the time spent travelling.

But there is another big deterrent for choosing the train: the sheer hassle of piecing together a cross-border trip that involves dealing with several train operators on different websites and in several different languages.

The air plane business – international in nature – has, over time and with...

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Investigations Investigation

Author Bio

This article is part of an investigation into the European Railway system by Investigate Europe. Besides EUobserver partners of this publication include: Der Tagesspiegel (Germany), Telex (Hungary), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), EfSyn (Greece), Público (Portugal), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), InfoLibre (Spain), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), Trends (Belgium), Republik (Switzerland). \nConributors to this research included: Wojciech Cieśla, Ingeborg Eliassen, Juliet Ferguson, Attila Kálmán, Nikolas Leontopoulos, Maria Maggiore, Leïla Miñano, Paulo Pena, Elisa Simantke, Nico Schmidt and Harald Schumann, as well as Lorenzo Buzzoni, Ana Ćurić, Eurydice Bersi (Reporters United), Philipp Albrecht (Republik). \nInvestigate Europe is supported by its readers via donations, private donors and serveral European foundations.