On 25 September, the European Passengers’ Federation was in Florence for the Florence School of Regulation forum on Implementing Single Ticketing 🎟️🚆 – a key topic for anyone travelling across Europe by rail.
The forum brought together policymakers, academics, industry, railway operators and passenger representatives to explore how better cooperation, smarter solutions and the right regulatory framework can make journeys more connected, seamless and efficient, while ensuring strong passenger protection.
EPF’s Senior Researcher Delphine Grandsart joined the discussion as a speaker, bringing the passenger perspective to the table and highlighting what is needed to make cross-border and multi-operator rail journeys easier to plan, book and navigate – including when things don’t go as planned.
What was discussed?
The forum explored three key areas:
✈️ Lessons from other transport modes: how airlines and other sectors manage single ticketing across different operators, the role of ticket vendors, tour operators and online travel agencies, and how passenger rights and connection times are handled.
🚆 Developing single ticketing in rail: how railway undertakings can work together, the role of ticket vendors, tour operators and digital platforms, and what passengers need to benefit fully from the rail network. The discussion also covered liability, assistance and the role of real-time data sharing.
🚆✈️🚌 Expanding multimodal ticketing: how single ticketing could support journeys combining rail with aviation, coach and other modes, what barriers need to be overcome, and how passenger rights can be protected as multimodal offers develop.
These discussions come at an important time, as the European Commission’s Passenger Package has brought forward a set of proposals aimed at strengthening passenger rights, improving rail ticketing, and supporting more seamless multimodal travel.
EPF’s key messages
EPF warmly welcomes the Commission’s ambitious proposal to strengthen rail passenger rights, which represents an important step forward for passengers travelling with multiple operators. At the same time, EPF highlighted several areas where the proposed framework could be strengthened further to ensure robust and effective protection throughout the journey.
🔄 The “single transaction” criterion leaves important gaps and should be replaced by a “single journey” approach.
🤝 Existing journey continuation agreements should be strengthened and made mandatory as a basis for robust re-routing guarantees.
⏱️ Minimum Connection Times should be transparent, subject to independent oversight, and based on realistic operating conditions.
📢 Operators and ticket vendors should have clearly defined responsibilities for providing information, assistance, arranging re-routing, and handling complaints.
Putting passengers at the centre
As journeys increasingly combine different railway operators – and potentially different modes of transport – ticketing arrangements need to work from the passenger’s perspective from beginning to end. Single ticketing can make cross-border travel easier, but only if it comes with effective and enforceable passenger protection. For EPF, this means ensuring that passengers are not left exposed when a connection is missed simply because different operators, ticket vendors or transport modes are involved – and that it is clear how they are going to get the information, assistance and re-routing they need when things go wrong, with these rights working in practice, not just on paper.
