How to fix railway ticketing in the EU

We know there is a problem with rail ticketing in the EU – anyone who has ever tried to book trains cross-border has encountered the issues. If you can find the trains you want, you often cannot get prices for the tickets. And even if you can get prices, you sometimes end up with multiple tickets in one transaction, leaving you without passenger rights if something goes wrong with your trip.

The case for passengers is obvious: make it easier to book international train trips and more passengers will do it. More passengers will mean more income for railway companies, who in turn will then provide more services.

Since the summer of 2024 we have known there is some political will to fix this within the European Commission – there was this text in Ursula von der Leyen’s Political Guidelines (PDF of the guidelines here):

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. To this end we will propose a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation

It has taken a little while, but we now know this Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation (SDBTR) will now be published in spring 2026.

And we know why this needs fixing.

This post will ask how to do it.

The nature of passenger railways in Europe

Before we launch into the how, we need to describe what passenger railways currently look like in Europe, and how booking tickets on these railways (whether we like it or not) is going to look very different to booking air tickets.

As railways generally operate as a network, many international journeys are not going to be point to point, but are going to need changes of train.

Although passenger rail in Europe is partially liberalised, when booking a cross border journey you are not likely to have only one company that can provide trains on all legs of your journey. Some of the trains might be run by state owned operators (DB, SNCF etc.) and others by private companies (Westbahn, Flix etc.), and we are going to need to combine these tickets together one after the other.

Railways have nevertheless partially taken over two things from the airline business for some services: yield management, and compulsory seat reservation. Any ticketing system has to also take that into account.

One ticket, or more than one ticket?

It might sound an odd place to start, but it is vitally important to understand the technicalities here.

Imagine I am making a trip from Mühldorf in Bavaria, Germany, to Strasbourg, France.

There are three legs to this journey:
1) Mühldorf – München: regional train operated by Deutsche Bahn
2) München – Stuttgart: long distance train operated by Deutsche Bahn or Westbahn (a private rival)
3) Stuttgart – Strasbourg: long distance train operated by Deutsche Bahn (in cooperation with the French SNCF)

If I book Deutsche Bahn trains throughout, I get one ticket, and one booking transaction to purchase my ticket.

If instead I want to use the Westbahn train, I will need three separate tickets that will need two or even three separate transactions to purchase.

And as if that is not complex enough, were my Westbahn train to be delayed and I miss the Stuttgart – Strasbourg, I have no rights to automatically take the next available train.

There are two ways to theoretically solve this: force all railway companies to be able to combine each other’s tickets into a single ticket (a financially and operationally very complex thing to do – especially considering yield management!) or sell multiple tickets in one transaction, and if minimum connection times are respected, anyway grant the passenger rights in the case of disruption (likely simpler to achieve – and this would be my favoured way to do it).

Whether a passenger has one Deutsche Bahn ticket for the entire Mühldorf – Strasbourg, or a Deutsche Bahn Mühldorf – München, Westbahn München – Stuttgart, and Deutsche Bahn Stuttgart – Strasbourg, would not matter.

So you want to sell multiple tickets in one transaction – how do you do that?

It starts with the data. If a passenger is to be able to buy tickets from different operators bundled together, a sales platform has to have access to the ticket inventory of the operators whose tickets it wants to sell.

Companies offering this sort of bundling of tickets exist already – Trainline, SNCB International and even Deutsche Bahn in some cases do it.

But there are two problems.

First, not all railway companies in all countries even allow third parties (be they either state or privately owned) to sell their tickets. And second, the terms under which tickets can be re-sold are often so lousy that the the re-seller has to add a booking fee over and above the ticket price.

The solution here is to legally oblige all railway operators – both public and private ones – make their data available to any third party that wants the data, on fair terms (FRAND). In practice this would mean a re-seller would receive a small commission for the re-sale, enough to cover their credit card fees and not have to charge a booking fee.

This would mean that – in my Mühldorf – Strasbourg case – were Deutsche Bahn to not want to sell Westbahn tickets (DB could of course change course and do so), a third party (someone like Trainline or Railfinder) could offer to sell me tickets for that connection, and not have to levy an extra fee.

It is obvious here that regardless of who sold the tickets, minimum connection times at any stations where a passenger transfers must be respected. And passengers and reseller platforms alike must be able to easily know what those times are.

There is a further issue here as to whether all the railway companies along my travel chain would really need to know about the other legs of my journey – that is explored in more depth here, but is probably not a central point.

Everyone has heard of DB Navigator, but no one knows what Westbahn is!

Small private operators have an additional complaint: if ticket sales for their services are not available on the incumbent platforms (DB has 95% of rail ticket sales on its platforms in Germany for example), then they are at a competitive disadvantage compared to the incumbent. This is a point the small private firm European Sleeper has made repeatedly.

So would it make sense to additionally force quasi-monopoly incumbent platforms to sell all tickets for all operators in their territory?

If you are European Sleeper or Westbahn I totally understand why you want this. It means you sell more tickets.

But from a passenger point of view I am not entirely convinced.

Ultimately the passenger interest here is that there are multiple platforms – be they privately owned ones like Railfinder or state owned ones like DB Navigator – where a passenger can buy any ticket to anywhere for the best price.

Putting it another way, if Deutsche Bahn would sooner refuse to sell Flix, Westbahn or European Sleeper tickets, and someone else can sell me those (which would be possible thanks to the FRAND principles above), then I will take my business elsewhere.

I suppose you could envisage some sort of middle course – where incumbent monopoly platforms were obliged to show prices for all operators, even if they still refused to directly re-sell tickets for those, but this would likely be a lot of technical complexity for scant gain.

Lastly this obligation would not solve issues with potential routes on either side of a border. A Strasbourg – Liège route for example could be done France-Belgium, France-Luxembourg-Belgium or France-Germany-Belgium – a national obligation on incumbent platforms is not going to help a passenger compare all prices here.

Liability in the case of disruption

Simply put, at the moment if something goes wrong with my journey and I have one single ticket, I am covered (including right to a night of hotel accommodation if I am stranded), while if I have more than one ticket with different companies I am not safe (some weaker, hard to use, non-legally binding rules like Agreement on Journey Continuation do help a little – more here).

At the same time as the European Commission is bringing forward the SDBTR, it will also propose a revision of the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation – they are both sides of the same coin.

The revision must provide a solution for when a passenger has multiple tickets bundled together: in that case liability for the costs incurred due to a disruption must be with the company that caused the delay in the first place – hence not on the shoulders of the passenger. Railway companies would then need to develop a system to compensate each other in those cases.

Railways will scream about this, but so too does Ryanair when it has to pay €250 compensation if a passenger with a €19,99 ticket is delayed.

The crux is this: make it easy for passengers to book international train tickets, and make sure they are not themselves going to be out of pocket if their journeys are disrupted, and you will get more passengers.

More passengers means more income, and more income will cover the fractionally higher costs the rail firms are going to have to cover here. Everyone wins.

In the end any railway that does not see it like this is conservative and passenger hostile.

Re-routing in cases where a train is full

In some parts of Europe – notably France and Spain – many trains are compulsory reservation, and can hence be fully booked for days. In these cases, passengers must be allowed to take any suitable route to their destination, including routes in other countries and using other operators.

It might in addition be worthwhile to examine the extent to which limited numbers of standing passengers can be allowed on high speed trains in the case of disruption – France allows this during strikes its own employees cause, so a system to allow some extra passengers in vestibules in the cases of delays must be possible to imagine.

Conclusion

In the end this is not especially complicated. As issuing a single ticket is likely too complicated, passengers with multiple tickets that respect minimum connection times should have the same passenger rights as passengers with single tickets. Platforms will have the opportunity to sell any ticket to anywhere at a best price, because FRAND principles will apply to ticket re-sale (so avoiding booking fees). Costs of disruption compensation must be borne by the company that caused the delay in the first place. Obligations on national incumbent platforms might benefit small operators, but are likely not central for passengers.

And in the end, if this is done right, it will mean more passengers being able to take trains for their international journeys. Good for them, good for the environment, and also good for the bottom line of railway operators.

Source: https://jonworth.eu/how-to-fix-railway-ticketing-in-the-eu/