Brussels, 18/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - “Yes” to the development of systems for the reservation and purchase of multimodal tickets, but “no” to bringing in a reservation system covering the whole journey (origin to destination). Such was the conclusion reached in the analysis made by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER). At an invitation from Mathieu Grosch (EPP, Belgium), CER representatives took stock, on Tuesday 16 November, of the current rail ticketing situation which, according to the CER, directly depends on specific passenger requests.
From a commercial point of view, it is mainly competition from the aviation sector that worries the rail sector. Rail remains competitive for travel over short distances, the duration of which does not exceed three hours compared to one hour by plane. Rail market shares begin to fall when the journey exceeds three hours, and drop to only 5% when the journey takes more than six hours. According to CER, quality service can be guaranteed throughout international routes taking under six hours and for transfers where demand is strong. The sector considers it would be harmful to the competitive situation to introduce the same ticketing system for rail as that used for air travel, as suggested on several occasions, inter alia, by the European commissioner for transport. In more practical terms, the introduction of such a system, which does not exist on most international routes operated by several companies, would allow passengers to buy a ticket covering the whole journey, from departure to arrival. “There are 55,000 stations in Europe” compared to 400 airports, which means there are 1.5 billion possible journey combinations, CER explains. The creation and the upkeep of a database of such magnitude would be “completely disproportionate” to the advantages that passengers would enjoy, the CER states. Three main tools for international cooperation currently exist within the CDR: - an electronic reservation system for seat, couchette and berth bookings, Hermès (which groups data from 42 rail companies); - the Multiple European Railways Integrated Timetable Storage, Merits comprising 28 companies; - and a centralised European price information system, Prifis, which contains data for more than 41 railways. Also, considerable progress has been made with a view to developing multimodal tickets which, once bought, are valid for several modes of transport (train, metro, bus or train-plane), such as CityTicket in Germany, Oyster in London and the TGV-Air in France. (A.By./transl.jl)