French President Emmanuel Macron said last year he wanted a rail pass for all, but after months of negotiations, a scaled-back version has been agreed.
    • poVoq ( poVoq@slrpnk.net ) English
      44·
      3 years ago

      The original plan was to make it valid both in France and Germany. Not sure what happened, but frankly the cost argument is ridiculous given how much money is spend on way worse transportation by the government otherwise.

          • poVoq ( poVoq@slrpnk.net ) English
            3·
            3 years ago

            Given that a very similar ticket already exists in Germany, they could have just told the DB staff to accept the French ticket as equivalent.

          • barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) English
            2·
            3 years ago

            Stuck in the pipeline, for whatever reason. Lots of the surrounding EU regulation also doesn’t make sense without having a unified European ticket system as things like “a delay made me miss the connection, provide alternate transport” doesn’t apply if you have two tickets.

            The situation in Germany is only going to get worse in the next decade, the reason being that they’re finally investing money in infrastructure which means lots of construction sites. We should be moving more cargo onto rail but fact of the matter is the rail links are already over capacity as-is. It might come to the point that Hamburg is going to build truck infrastructure at the shunting yard to get trucks off the harbour streets. At least the connection to Scandinavia is sensible, it’s been carrying Denmark-length (835m) trains since 2012 and the Swedes are currently fixing their infrastructure. Meanwhile Switzerland is loudly thinking about using Italy as a port because Bavarian-run federal transportation ministers like nothing more than building Autobahnen at the expense of rail. There’s a reason why “Hinterland” is not only a technical term, and not a nice one.

        • WallEx ( WallEx@feddit.de ) English
          5·
          3 years ago

          There is indeed a euro-express (or something like that) and switzerland has special trains for that, so that their good ones aren’t ruined by German rails…

  • AutoTL;DR ( autotldr@lemmings.world ) BBEnglish
    5·
    3 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    French President Emmanuel Macron said last year he wanted a rail pass for all, but after months of negotiations, a scaled-back version has been agreed.

    Back in September, President Emmanuel Macron promised the introduction of a national rail pass during an interview with the journalist and Youtuber known as Hugo Decrypt.

    It was originally supposed to mirror the Deustchlandticket that allows unlimited travel on all local and regional public transport for €49 regardless of age in Germany.

    The French ticket quickly encountered problems with some regional mayors criticising the lack of detail in the plans and the offer of the state to fund 80 per cent of the cost, estimated to be €15 million.

    The less than four-hour trip from Lyon to Marseille is another option where a one-way ticket often costs more than the €49 price of the new rail pass.

    Popular intercity train routes include Bordeaux to Montpellier and the rail pass would also lead to savings on a return trip.

    The original article contains 472 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!