Future of Rails

The EC announced a package of measures to deliver better quality and more choice in railway services in Europe. Rail is a vital part of EU transport, with a key role in addressing rising traffic demand, congestion, fuel security and decarbonisation.

[marekliska]

Hope the trains in Eu will improve. It's not impossible to travel through Eu by train, but it's very expensive and complicated. I would prefer travelling by train than plane, but plane is currently best option for me.
The Eurostar (London-Paris) is really bad, not a thing to be proud of. Extremely expensive and very uncomfortable way of travel; here again, plane is much better option, unfortunately.
But I'm glad the EU is doing something, letting the market free, for privet sector.

[Legilimentable]

Vertically integrated Operators have historically evolved. Seperating services from tracks comes at a huge loss of jobs, it must be implemented for all EU member states either at once or not at all (still vertically integrated rail companies will cheat on seperated markets), and finally experience from the UK shows convincingly that uncoordinated competition of different rail services comes at a huge loss of comfort for passengers. Just coordinate regulation and leave the rest as it is...

[cig]

Oh dear, airport slots compared with railways again... a clear case of apples and pears! And how has competition on the Brussels - Cologne route helped passengers exactly? Where's the benefit of not being able to buy Thalys tickets from DB? And interoperability in the form of UIC rolling stock and common ticketing systems is being phased out everywhere one looks...
See World Carfree Network's Back on Track campaign for the counter-view.

[xoim]

Yegods, this is neoliberal balls of the first order: technically illiterate (I am a rail professional), ideologically driven nonsense. Rail functions optimally as a vertically integrated, publicly owned monopoly, international traffic smoothed by co-operation. Interoperability is EU dogma based on immovable but ludicrous tenets: competition=good, private=good, public service=bad
The world's most effective railways are monopolies run in the public interest; there's no open-access in Switzerland!