On Friday, 17 January 2025, representatives from EPF met with Eurostar Secretary General, Gareth Williams and team, for our annual high-level meeting, held in Brussels and online. The agenda was based on a preparatory meeting, open to all EPF members.
Eurostar presented an encouraging business outlook, reflecting recovery and growth in demand for high-speed international train travel. Despite operational challenges, fundamental […]
On 5. February 2025, EPF and STA – Smart Ticketing Alliance – organised a joint workshop for EPF and STA members, on the topic of National Digital Ticketing schemes.
“Digital Ticketing” in public transport is being organised in more and more countries at national level and offered to passengers as an integrated system. In countries where this is not yet […]
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Bus Users UK, the charity committed to improving access to transport.
Set up in 1975 by Dr Caroline Cahm MBE, the organisation was formalised in the 1980s during bus deregulation and known as the National Federation of Bus Users. Its complaints handling service was officially launched in 1985 with the backing of the Confederation […]
Transport Focus, one of EPF’s British members, recently commissioned research in order to gain a better understanding of the way that railway performance measures can best reflect passengers’ priorities. The research will help inform forthcoming decisions relating to a reset of the official passenger train performance measures.
The research was designed to explore passengers’ views and aspirations about train performance […]
In order to comply with the Green Deal’s objectives, the European Commission has decided to clarify under which conditions the PSO Regulation 1370/2007 could apply to other than local and regional public transport services. To EPF, precisions included in the revised guidelines are welcomed as they reinforce the importance of rail and multimodality.
Thus, with a view to the necessary […]
Kaunas has made a wonderful start to its year as European Capital of Culture. The opening events this month have motivated us all to try to travel to Kaunas at some point by the end of the year.
Unfortunately though, it is currently not possible to reach Kaunas by train! Re-opening cross-border rail services between Lithuania and its EU neighbours […]
The good news is that rail is widely considered as an alternative for planes and cars. The European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council of Ministers are all in favour of rail. In 2021 the European Year of Rail took place, unfortunately in the middle of Covid-19. Not only the European institutions see the need for more […]
Thalys and Eurostar have announced the wish to merge into one company. Is this merger beneficial for passengers? In general competition is good for the consumers. EPF has seen that the competition on the HSL from Turino to Napoli in Italy has led to lower prices and more passengers. The same can be said about the line from Vienna […]
CER published a Ticketing Roadmap on 20. September. The following concrete actions are planned until 2025:
More up to date timetables (available to any interested party)
Being able to buy train tickets at least 6 and up to 12 months in advance
More up to date tariff exchange, enabling through tickets
European wide standardized API for selling train tickets
[…]
The EC is exploring a new initiative dealing with “multimodal digital mobility services”. Delegated Regulation (EC) 2017/1926 already covers multimodal travel information services; payment and booking will be covered by this new initiative. EPF’s feedback to the Inception Impact Assessment roadmap (submitted on 2. November) is available here. EPF welcomes the EC’s proposal for a Regulation on Multimodal Digital Mobility […]