Liberalisation – what does it offer to passengers?

Trevor Garrod Chairman, European Passengers’ Federation

In the European Passengers’ Federation, bringing together over 30 asssociations and bodies in 18 countries, we have followed with interest the moves towards railway liberalisation.
For us the question is a simple one – will it make things better for passengers?
Competition among rail operators can be in the interests of passengers by giving them choice. Some observers consider that competition stimulates innovation and will make train operators more passenger-focussed. They point to the very high ratings for passenger satisfaction scored by open access operators in Great Britain in the twice-yearly National Passenger Survey.
However – what happens when things go wrong – or more particularly when a passenger needs to alter his or her travel arrangements?  Will the ticket be accepted on another operator’s train?  For the average passenger, “a train is a train” irrespective of who is operating it. To whom can he or she turn for help and advice? The work of RailTeam is relevant here. EPF supports the aspirations of this group of high-speed operators in the areas of ticketing and customer care and believes they should be encouraged.
Consideration should also be given to information provision and ticket distribution.   Passengers can only benefit from competition  if they have access to reliable impartial information about the different services on offer. For long-distance and international journeys, today’s railway industry could learn in this respect from the airlines and indeed from the practical experience of the pioneering railway companies of the nineteenth century.
It would be good to see all of Europe’s rail operators making a similar commitment, building on the practical opportunities  provided by the work of the European Railway Agency in developing a Technical Standard for Interoperability relating to passenger applications’ telematics (TAP-TSI) – infiormation and ticketing. EPF has also been involved in this work.
Travellers – especially less experienced ones – need to be helped make informed choices. If the national Inter City operator chooses to run a coach along the motorway instead of a train – as happens between Nuremberg and Prague – and another train operator chooses to run a train (which may take longer, but serve extra places), then liberalisation is giving the passenger choice. Similarly, some passengers travelling for leisure may well be happy to take a slower (but cheaper) train.
In conclusion, liberalisation can bring advantages to passengers and gain new business overall for rail – but it will not automatically do so; and can sometimes bring its own problems. What is  important is that all operators – whether international, national or local – sign up to the same standards of passenger rights and customer care; that they talk to each other and that they realise that the passenger whose rail experiences are too costly, too complicated and too unreliable may next time choose to go instead by coach, car or plane.


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