Brussels, 05/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission laid the first stone of a pan-European rail ticketing system with its adoption, on Thursday 5 May, of a regulation which forces standardisation of rail passenger data on fares and timetables. By 2015, when planning trips in the EU, travellers will be able to check for the best train fares on rail operators' and ticket sellers' sites.
Once implemented, this, one of European Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas' priority projects, will make it as easy for people travelling by train to reserve their tickets for international journeys as for those travelling by plane. The aim of the project is to give operators access to rail companies' information and to be able to offer this information to travellers by 2014 or 2015. “If we are serious about getting people onto rail … we need to offer rail passengers the seamless planning and ticketing offers that match the airlines”, Kallas said in a press release. In future, the Commission wants “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”, he added.
Adoption of this technical regulation - Telematics Applications for Passenger Services - means that the main information needed to reserve and issue tickets will have to be exchanged between train companies across the EU and with ticket vendors. Rail operators will have to harmonise timetable and fare data. These are the basic data underpinning journey planning, reservation and ticketing systems, such as what kind of train is running, when the train stops, where it stops, what kind of accommodation is available eg first and second class seats, how many unreserved seats are available, tariff structures etc. The regulation also legally requires operators to make data related to timetabling available in the public domain, as well as to make fare information available to agreed partners. These data already exist but rail companies prefer to provide them on their own websites, the Commission regrets.
Unlike in aviation, no centralised reservation system currently exists in the rail sector. Rail passengers, therefore, have only very limited possibilities when it comes to booking rail tickets cross-border (with the exception of a small number of major international direct cross border rail routes).
According to AFP, Kallas is not keen to impose anything on operators and, to achieve consensus, wants to proceed step by step to eliminate obstacles encountered to planning journeys within the EU. The first step was taken on Thursday. In 2012, the Commission will present a further measure to guide all railway companies and ticket vendors in adapting their IT data systems so that they are in line with EU wide standards and data can in practice be exchanged and used by all operators. The Commission is also studying whether there is any need to take similar measures for journeys involving different forms of transport. A public consultation was launched on 1 April. A.By./transl.rt)