Link via @HRCH - The Guardian reports on T&E’s research about rail booking problems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/21/almost-half-of-eus-busiest-flight-routes-are-hard-or-impossible-to-book-on-trains-report
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@jon Exactly. That’s our stated goal.
@stefanlindbohm i think it's easier to say that if you haven't seen how enormous the savings from split ticketing can be
we're talking about 75% reductions in price. yes the third party resellers have better interfaces but i think that's a minor reason for their success in the UK market
i don't think it's unique to the UK - you can get similar results in France if you price up tickets manually
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@stefanlindbohm i think it's easier to say that if you haven't seen how enormous the savings from split ticketing can be
we're talking about 75% reductions in price. yes the third party resellers have better interfaces but i think that's a minor reason for their success in the UK market
i don't think it's unique to the UK - you can get similar results in France if you price up tickets manually
@bovine3dom I totally get your point on the UK case. I’m just not super excited for exporting that solution as it seems more like a bug than a feature. If this should be regulated, I’d be way happier if the obligation was put on carriers to not create these conditions in the first place so all sales channels get the same lowest possible price without hacks.
I think there’s enough room for retailers to differentiate on designing for different use cases and coverage.
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@stefanlindbohm i think it's easier to say that if you haven't seen how enormous the savings from split ticketing can be
we're talking about 75% reductions in price. yes the third party resellers have better interfaces but i think that's a minor reason for their success in the UK market
i don't think it's unique to the UK - you can get similar results in France if you price up tickets manually
@bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH Could you really get that much discount in France on the exact same route?
(On a route that's directly bookable on SNCF Connect i.e. less than 2 changes)I know there are tricks with TER pricing, but I'd also say that saving 75% when the base price is 20€ isn't quite the same league as saving 75% when the base price is 200€.
Happy to see some example
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@bovine3dom
My opinion and also our business case is that people don’t use independent portals because they don’t offer a good enough improvement of customer experience compared to the extra cost.I usually don’t see a point in throwing competitors under the bus, but Omio is extra egregious with their model of both applying a non-transparent markup of ticket prices as well as a non-refundable booking fee. Their higher prices are not due to the product sold being different.
@stefanlindbohm @bovine3dom @jon @HRCH Yeah, in other words: does the value added justify the fee added? If you can offer a smooth route planner + end-to-end ticket booking in one payment (don't care if it counts as one "transaction" in legal verbiage) for a journey with 3+ operators that's already raising the bar.
And I think there'd be value in adding some flexibility on top (letting the user tweak or even build the schedule like Interrail app) but understand that's extra complexity for now.
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@bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH Could you really get that much discount in France on the exact same route?
(On a route that's directly bookable on SNCF Connect i.e. less than 2 changes)I know there are tricks with TER pricing, but I'd also say that saving 75% when the base price is 20€ isn't quite the same league as saving 75% when the base price is 200€.
Happy to see some example
@cycling_on_rails @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH
Onything that crosses the edge of a discount card applicability could benefit.Recently saw someone dealing with an inability to book something like Metz - Luxembourg at the correct price applying all the relevant discounts.
I have similarly stupid issues with SNCF where the cheapest option to Paris involves splitting at Forbach, to get the correct discount on Forbach-Paris.
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@bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH Could you really get that much discount in France on the exact same route?
(On a route that's directly bookable on SNCF Connect i.e. less than 2 changes)I know there are tricks with TER pricing, but I'd also say that saving 75% when the base price is 20€ isn't quite the same league as saving 75% when the base price is 200€.
Happy to see some example
@cycling_on_rails being cheeky with a poor-people discount card but flexible ticket for €60 non-split vs €6+€9 = €15 split
you can see similar reductions without discount cards by chaining together regional passes but that would involve more screenshots
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@bovine3dom I totally get your point on the UK case. I’m just not super excited for exporting that solution as it seems more like a bug than a feature. If this should be regulated, I’d be way happier if the obligation was put on carriers to not create these conditions in the first place so all sales channels get the same lowest possible price without hacks.
I think there’s enough room for retailers to differentiate on designing for different use cases and coverage.
@stefanlindbohm i think i disagree with you pretty strongly here
finding the optimum route/price combination is quite a hard computer science problem, i don't think it's a bug that the SNCF can't give you that, they're quite simply institutionally too bad at computers. probably because they can't pay talent enough or give them enough political space to experiment
they went on the record recently saying that they thought selling tickets was technically difficult!
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Link via @HRCH - The Guardian reports on T&E’s research about rail booking problems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/21/almost-half-of-eus-busiest-flight-routes-are-hard-or-impossible-to-book-on-trains-report
As an analysis of the problem this is ok. We need a bit more about what to *do* from here
@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm So in summary:
- SNCF, Renfe and PKP are bad at cross-border ticketing,
- 3rd-party incumbents (sorry for the oxymoron) are focused on populous Western Europe countries around the Blue Banana,
- 3rd-party incumbents don't support discount cards for lack of access or lack of integration.
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm So in summary:
- SNCF, Renfe and PKP are bad at cross-border ticketing,
- 3rd-party incumbents (sorry for the oxymoron) are focused on populous Western Europe countries around the Blue Banana,
- 3rd-party incumbents don't support discount cards for lack of access or lack of integration.@cycling_on_rails i love that brussels is the centre of the universe for these maps
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm So in summary:
- SNCF, Renfe and PKP are bad at cross-border ticketing,
- 3rd-party incumbents (sorry for the oxymoron) are focused on populous Western Europe countries around the Blue Banana,
- 3rd-party incumbents don't support discount cards for lack of access or lack of integration.@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Aside that, interesting that there's such a gap between DB and ÖBB for the straightforward Munich-Vienna.
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Aside that, interesting that there's such a gap between DB and ÖBB for the straightforward Munich-Vienna.
@cycling_on_rails @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Try it from MÁV - the gap will be even more!
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Aside that, interesting that there's such a gap between DB and ÖBB for the straightforward Munich-Vienna.
@cycling_on_rails i love when each operator gets their own allocation of seats and sells them separately
if we banned nominative tickets arbitrageurs could fix all this nonsense for us
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@cycling_on_rails @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Try it from MÁV - the gap will be even more!
@jon do you really think T&E has heard of MÁV
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Aside that, interesting that there's such a gap between DB and ÖBB for the straightforward Munich-Vienna.
@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm As for Spain, I'm not sure there's more than correlation between prices, market share and incumbent status.
Trainline runs gigantic ads in the Barcelona waiting area. So maybe there's consumer choice here (e.g. better comfort and/or luggage space in AVE).
Plus market share is driven by offer (how many trains each operator runs). And price by offer as well (related to comfort level).
Lastly, are these figures even for Barcelona-Madrid, or Spain-wide?
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@cycling_on_rails @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH
Onything that crosses the edge of a discount card applicability could benefit.Recently saw someone dealing with an inability to book something like Metz - Luxembourg at the correct price applying all the relevant discounts.
I have similarly stupid issues with SNCF where the cheapest option to Paris involves splitting at Forbach, to get the correct discount on Forbach-Paris.
@Sobex @stefanlindbohm @jon Agreed, but I don't think @bovine3dom 's example involves discount cards. Just the same journey but priced differently via split tickets.
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@jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Aside that, interesting that there's such a gap between DB and ÖBB for the straightforward Munich-Vienna.
@cycling_on_rails @jon @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm Looks like ÖBB doesn’t sell Sparschiene tickets on most Railjets from Münich while DB happily sells Sparpreise.
I guess that happens if everyone does their own discount pricing independently.
(A similar thing can happen with codeshare flights, so this isn’t unique to rail.)
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@Sobex @stefanlindbohm @jon Agreed, but I don't think @bovine3dom 's example involves discount cards. Just the same journey but priced differently via split tickets.
@cycling_on_rails discount cards are the easiest way to get discrepancies but you can get them in France just by comparing _tout public_ O/D tickets, usually where regions have extra-territorial prix "kilométriques" and splitting the ticket can let you surf the most beneficial formulae
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@stefanlindbohm @bovine3dom @jon @HRCH Yeah, in other words: does the value added justify the fee added? If you can offer a smooth route planner + end-to-end ticket booking in one payment (don't care if it counts as one "transaction" in legal verbiage) for a journey with 3+ operators that's already raising the bar.
And I think there'd be value in adding some flexibility on top (letting the user tweak or even build the schedule like Interrail app) but understand that's extra complexity for now.
@cycling_on_rails Exactly this.
And once we have the ”basics” (not really basic) of cross-border trips working, I’m super excited to keep adding features for more power user type scenarios. Like you say, if you know you want to take certain connections, or combine tickets a certain way that is different from what we propose. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves
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@stefanlindbohm i think i disagree with you pretty strongly here
finding the optimum route/price combination is quite a hard computer science problem, i don't think it's a bug that the SNCF can't give you that, they're quite simply institutionally too bad at computers. probably because they can't pay talent enough or give them enough political space to experiment
they went on the record recently saying that they thought selling tickets was technically difficult!
@bovine3dom Ok that’s a fair enough point.
I think my main resistance is on the part where you chuck over an unexpected number of tickets to the traveler who needs to deal with what to show where, and added complexity in disruption communication etc.
Tariff data is already in the MMTIS legislation from March, so maybe this could alternatively be solved by also obliging operators to allow a retailer to specify how to combine tariffs on a single ticket issued?
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@bovine3dom Ok that’s a fair enough point.
I think my main resistance is on the part where you chuck over an unexpected number of tickets to the traveler who needs to deal with what to show where, and added complexity in disruption communication etc.
Tariff data is already in the MMTIS legislation from March, so maybe this could alternatively be solved by also obliging operators to allow a retailer to specify how to combine tariffs on a single ticket issued?
@stefanlindbohm i believe _in theory_ UIC's new ticketing standard allows for multiple tickets embedded within a single QR (sorry) code
@q is our resident expert there
so maybe somewhere the regulation needs to allow retailers to take advantage of that?
