Let's do a little check, shall we?

@albertowmazzola was happy to tell me the other week that Skyscanner for Rail tools exist in Europe

And @CER_railways has trumpeted the need for ticketing platforms in #EUYearOfRail and on #ConnectingEurope Express

A quick 🧵
Were I to want to travel between Tourcoing (in France at the border to Belgium) to Lyon, tomorrow, where can I find the details of the only direct train there is?

Oh, and of course it's a train run by SNCF, member organisation of @CER_railways 👏
That train is a OUIGO low cost TGV

✅ Here is is on the OUIGO site 👇
ventes.ouigo.com
✅ The regular SNCF booking portal oui(dot)sncf has it too 👇
de.oui.sncf
❌ SNCF's international portal Rail Europe does not have it #Fail 👇
raileurope.com
❌ Deutsche Bahn was long known to have the best timetable site in Europe, but the Tourcoing-Lyon train is not in it 👇
reiseauskunft.bahn.de
❌ I'd been told by @Lenny_du_Nord that Swiss Railways had for a while listed OUIGO trains. No, not any more... 👇
sbb.ch
❌ As Tourcoing is right next to the Belgian border. How about SNCB International? No, you guessed it, that doesn't work either... 👇
b-europe.com
What about third party platforms?

✅ Trainline can find it 🤯 👇
thetrainline.com
❌ Omio can't find it 👇
omio.com
And now as OUIGO runs in 🇪🇸, how about for the LOLs, try that?

Nah, why would SNCF have joined up the sites? Why would someone searching in Spanish want to travel across France? 🤷‍♂️ ❌ 👇
ouigo.com/es/
So there we go...

I can buy the tickets from 3 sites, 2 of them directly under the control of SNCF itself. The OUIGO train doesn't even show in timetables run by railways other than SNCF
*** AT THE VERY LEAST *** we need a proper European timetable that shows all trains (even ones like OUIGO) in it! And then ideally platforms that allow these trains to be booked too.

We're a hell of a long way away from that just now!

/ends

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More from @jonworth

19 Oct
Want a cheap train from Brussels to Paris?

It sure ain't IZY!

And you better not speak German, Italian or Spanish (seriously)

Do read on in the #EUYearOfRail thread 🧵
There's a low-ish cost train service between Brussels and Paris called Thalys IZY - its own website is here 👇
izy.com/en

Services are reduced post-COVID, but it still runs...

But how do you book it?

Here's the train I want on the IZY site ✅
But presuming you might - naively - assume it's run by Thalys, you might think its trains were on the Thalys website

❌ But no, you'd be wrong - they don't show there 👇
booking.thalys.com
Read 13 tweets
18 Oct
Another one of those trips where the absence of a night train makes the whole trip fiendishly complex by train...

The München-Villach-Ljubljana-Zagreb night train is summer only

So a Düsseldorf-Lesce Bled trip in December... results in a 3 hours stop in the night in Villach
And yes, there is the daytime ICE + EC option, but that (for this trip) means 1 extra night in a hotel in Düsseldorf and a day in Slovenia lost
There is the yearly Zürich-Feldkirch-Innsbruck-Villach-Ljubljana-Zagreb service... but try picking that up from Germany - results in very long and strange routes
Read 4 tweets
15 Oct
The UK is indeed on the verge of joining the EU Digital COVID Pass - I know this from my own sources

In that regard, this Guardian piece is correct 👇
theguardian.com/travel/2021/oc…

But what is going on, technically here, and what changes will it bring for Brits travelling?

A 🧵
There are essentially 2 sorts of places where you might need to prove your 💉💉 status: upon entering a country (at a border control), or at a venue once you are inside a country (at a museum or cafe for example)
And there are 2 different ways to prove that status: the old way, based on papers, certificates, or the little yellow vaccination booklets. Or using a QR code - in the EU known as a EU Digital COVID Pass

(QR code can be on paper, but the important point is it's digitally signed)
Read 15 tweets
12 Oct
Trying to find what is going on in the European Parliament with regard to UK-EU relations remains a nightmare...

We know that last week the EP agreed to set up the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly - @EP_ForeignAff put out a press release 👇
europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-…
Here's the Decision 👇
europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document…

And @vonderburchard wrote about it for @POLITICOEurope on 5 Oct 👇
politico.eu/article/europe…
At the time of writing @GreensEFA @RenewEurope @ecrgroup @Left_EU had chosen its members... but @EPPgroup & @TheProgressives have not

And then...
media.giphy.com/media/Az1CJ2ME…
Read 5 tweets
12 Oct
How do you rid a country of a pandemic of stupidity?

It's not that UK political and commentariat class is ideologically wrong (although could be true as well), it's that so many - especially the cabinet - come across as stupid

As a start you have to take problems *seriously*
Take *any* of the aspects of the UK's multicrisis at the moment - food supply chains, clogged ports, gas prices, petrol supply, labour shortages - the whole thing is fiendishly complex to solve

I don't know how to solve it. But hell it's serious!
This, I suppose, is what happens when the political discussion in public is so disconnected from reality that bad decisions have no practical consequences

Where a referendum has left an opposition so cowed it cannot point out practical problems
Read 5 tweets
11 Oct
As well as the outright stupidity of the UK Government's Brexit positions just now (something we've grown used to over 5 years), there's a further headache

The *INEVITABILITY* of what comes next

A 🧵 on whether we can break the Brexit cycle... Image
David Frost is giving a speech Tuesday 12 October where he will outline the UK's problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol
We know what those problems are because Frost floated them for the Sunday papers

And Frost has sounded like a broken record over the summer since the UK Government's "Command Paper" - Tuesday is likely to be more of the same
Read 17 tweets

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