One of the best things about living in Europe, and Brussels in particular, is observing the mild culture clashes that take place between people from different parts of the continent. Europeans are sufficiently alike to live cohesively alongside each other, but different enough to provide light entertainment.
And so last week to Germany, the land of unexpected nudity and citizen reprimands for jaywalking, a country of cosy humour and surprisingly bad trains – aboard which I was privileged to witness a delicious collision of Latin flexibility with Lutheran discipline.
It was on a German express train just outside Brussels, at about 6.30 on Saturday morning, when two Spanish students were informed by the train conductor – a German in his 20s – that their ticket issued by the Belgian state rail company wasn’t valid for this particular train and they’d have to pay an extra €60.
What followed was 10 minutes of the students protesting that they couldn’t possibly be at fault, largely because they were “just following Google Maps”, and trying to negotiate with the conductor to “find another solution”.
The latter, unmoved, explained that his company was entirely separate to the one that had sold the students’ tickets and that there was no way out of the extra fare. This baby-faced philosopher batted away half a dozen excuses before reaching his stunning peroration: “It’s your responsibility to inform yourself before you board the train.”
Surprise fees and Hegelian logic are a lot to take in before breakfast, but the students can console themselves with an amusing anecdote and a lesson learned for next time. And at least there was no language barrier: Naturally, a Spaniard and a German meeting in French- and Dutch-speaking territory spoke to each other in fluent English.
Going off the rails
But what lesson will the students take from this episode? I fear it will be that train travel is difficult to plan and full of hidden fees; that if the German train operator can sting you even in Belgian territory, then cross-border train travel is too risky an endeavour altogether. Better to play it safe and take a cheap flight.
Sometimes excess fees are inevitable. On my return journey, a predictable service failure by Deutsche Bahn forced me to take a Eurostar train or risk being stranded overnight, incurring an extra cost of €72 as well as a near-three-hour delay. I had budgeted the necessary time and money (“it’s your responsibility to inform yourself!”) and managed to claim a refund, but it’s in no way acceptable.
Such routine chaos is a pity because train travel, when it works, is more fun than flying and often cheaper once you know what you’re doing. It’s also a failure of public policy because flying is ruinous for the climate and people deserve a good alternative, which in most of Europe should logically be cross-border rail.
The ‘good’ part of ‘good alternative’ is essential. People only have the capacity to care about a limited number of things, and to make a limited amount of personal sacrifice in service of those things. Regardless of the climate impact, most people won’t reduce their flying unless trains are really good.
The definition of ‘good’ also depends on context. Missed train connections might be an acceptable setback for a student Interrailing around Europe, easily offset by the friends you made along the way; but not for somebody travelling for a business meeting or taking restless children on holiday.
Finally, people have worse logistical skills than we used to – and train operators have not kept up. As the students on the train demonstrated, many young people struggle to orient themselves without Google Maps. If you need pen, paper, three apps and an abacus to plan cross-border train trips, most people simply won’t do it.
There’s no point lamenting this. Saying that Gen Z can’t read a map or a train timetable is like saying Boomers can’t shoe a horse: They grew up in a world where it’s no longer necessary. Gen Z expects everything to be easy and seamless and contained within a single app, so if you want them to take cross-border trains that’s what you have to provide.
Barriers to entry
On my journey last week, the students messed up but the rail companies are more seriously to blame. If someone buys an anytime ticket between two cities, they should be able to get on any train running that route. The complexities of who pays what to whom should be dealt with in the background by the companies, without the consumer ever seeing it.
There is some progress in the private sector. From early offerings by enthusiasts like the Man in Seat 61 to newer apps such as Omio, cross-border rail travel – and sometimes multimodal travel – is becoming easier.
But these services are peripheral, bolted on to the muddled patchwork of national rail operators, and can only do so much. What’s needed is a concerted effort among rail companies to makes themselves interoperable.
Their failure to do so is harming private competitors, too. In 2020, a French startup called Midnight Trains announced an exciting project to operate sleek cross-border sleeper trains aimed at business and premium leisure travellers. With an initial route planned between Paris and Rome, it aimed eventually to offer a stylish and reliable alternative to short-haul flights across Europe.
Four years later it was dead, in no small part due to hostility from established operators. “You’ll never be able to find second-hand material because the historical players prefer to scrap it, rather than sell it to new entrants,” the founders quoted a sceptical supporter as telling them. Another challenger night train company, European Sleeper, is operational but still burning investor cash.
Cross-border rail travel is also hampered by failing infrastructure and unreliable national services in many European countries, particularly Germany whose size and central location make it unavoidable for many routes.
All of this suggests that a higher power should intervene. While EU regulation is frequently useless and divorced from citizens’ needs, fixing Europe’s rail network is exactly the sort of thing that Brussels should be doing – whether by using competition policy to break up national monopolies, or by applying Single Market principles to require operators to maintain their networks and open them to trains from other countries.
The EU has fought incumbents to improve citizens’ lives before. Established telecom operators cried foul when the EU tried to end roaming surcharges; but the measure was passed, citizens’ lives got better – and the companies, despite their direst warnings, survived.
Giving rail monopolies a dose of the same medicine will allow Europeans to travel more and emit less. If that means fewer opportunities to see Spaniards and Germans misunderstanding each other, it’s a price I’m happy to pay.