European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) conducted a good webinar on 16.9. Many issues of ticketing, barcodes, on-line data and so on came up. But contributions were not very clear about what was really so slow and reluctant in the rail society, that the goal could be a harmonized system so late as 2030.
Josef Doppelbauer, Executive Director of ERA hit the nail at the end of the meeting by saying: The ticketing is a very important issue for the users of the railways, for the attractiveness for the railways. Attractiveness is always related to simplicity. It should be about a multi-modal ticket, including the last mile (urban).
How far can voluntary cooperation go, and how far do we need regulation? Unfortunately in rail we are still very fragmented. To be honest with you, I am very disappointed that the panel today has more or less accepted the 10 years of scope. Since the green pass for Covid could be done in a few months, why the hell do we need 10 years to agree on a common format of ticketing. It simply takes too long to implement the most simple things. The things should be done much earlier than 2030.
A very interesting webinar ! Useful to spent 60 minutes to see this !