Sat, May 26 2012

EC wants standardised European rail ticket system

Thu, May 05 2011 21:27 CET

byThe Sofia Echo staff

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EC wants standardised European rail ticket system

The special V150 French TGV high-speed train travels along newly-built track to break the world speed record at 574.8km/h in France's Champagne region in Grigny, April 3 2007.

Photo: Reuters

The European Commission (EC) adopted on May 5 2011 a regulation aimed at enabling pan-European rail journey planning and ticketing.

The regulation envisages a standardisation of rail passenger data on fares and timetables.

"This means that key reservation and ticketing information will be inter-operable and can be exchanged between rail companies throughout the EU as well as ticket vendors," the EC said.

The EC said that it would in 2012 bring forward a complementary legal measure requiring rail operators to bring their IT systems and practices into line, so that the standardised data can in practice be transferred between operators.

These measures lay the technical foundations to allow a new generation of European rail journey planners and ticketing systems to start to emerge on the market.

European Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas, responsible for transport, said: "If we are serious about getting people onto rail, and particularly about having rail compete with air travel over middle distances then we need to offer rail passengers the seamless planning and ticketing offers that match the airlines.

"We want to make it as easy, in the future, to book a rail ticket from Barcelona to Brussels or Berlin to Bratislava as it is to book a corresponding flight. Making common timetabling and fare information available to operators is a significant first step, but it is just the start of a much bigger push to make pan European rail planning and ticketing a reality," Kallas said.

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