DB 115 - CC / Flickr

5 days into the volcano mess and the finger pointing is starting, some of it more and some of it less well argued. Charlemagne has an elegantly penned argument of why he will not comment, while EUObserver has a summary of the rants of Europe’s politicians. Alejandro meanwhile has a go at interpreting everything according to bureaucratic meltdown.

I’m not going to try to wade into the debate about whether (or not) to open or close airspace. I haven’t got the faintest clue about the pros and cons of all that (although I fear an irrational approach to the risk that something scary might happen is behind it).

No, instead I am going to return to a common theme of this blog – what the railways of Europe ought to be doing to help get people out of this mess. I was on a train from Berlin to Brussels yesterday and those hours gave me some time to think…

Firstly, large (ex-)state-run operators are going to do a better job to get people home that smaller, private ones. Deutsche Bahn has a whole bunch of extra locomotives and 200 km/h capable carriages hanging around that can be put into action swiftly (Class 115s in operation in Köln yesterday for example). Equally SNCB could use all its extra P trains and locomotives. Smaller, private operators just do not have this legacy capacity – although eventually short notice leasing (Dispolok etc.) might help in this regard. Splitting of goods and passenger businesses may also not have helped here – could freight locos be commissioned as easily as a decade ago? Of course the caveat to this is SNCF whose staff have been on strike for the past few days making routes through France very complicated…

Secondly, if your train is on a dedicated high speed line, or is reservation only, you’re more likely to have problems. SNCF and Thalys are the prime examples here. Investment has been in high speed trains on dedicated lines, to the detriment of investment elsewhere, and with the rapid expansion of the network there are few spare train sets. Plus as these trains are compulsory reservation you can’t easily stand in the trains either. The German hybrid model – ICEs and ICs on most new lines – can cope better in times of exceptional demand. Also the little signs in ICEs telling you what seats are reserved when really helps fill a train efficiently.

Thirdly, if you’re on an international route it’s even more hopeless, especially if that’s served by a high speed line (for example Köln-Brussels, Brussels-Paris). There will be a lack of train sets and the problem will be additionally compounded by a lack of multi-voltage locomotives that could run replacement trains. SNCB Class 16s could be pushed into service, but that of course would require cooperation of SNCB and DB… hmmm.

Fourth, all of this is compounded by a national approach and a lack of proactivity on the part of the railways. Eurostar is an exception here, having laid on extra trains and made tickets available at a special price, but the railways never seem to be able to give the impression of flexibility and proactivity. I’m convinced that passengers would all be ready to get to their destination more slowly if only everyone was to be able to get there in reasonable circumstances – I’m not convinced the railways always bear this in mind. Could better planning for exceptional circumstances be better legislated for?

So then, in summary, you’re stuck somewhere in Europe and you want to get home. What should you do?

1. Go through Germany rather than France – no compulsory reservations, no strikes, extra trains, and even when no extra trains then buses.
2. Use Deutsche Bahn’s rail planner – reiseauskunft.bahn.de – to plan your trip and for some journeys you can even get online tickets. You can also search for connections not involving any high speed trains.
3. Get on Twitter and Facebook and ask for some help. I’m happy to assist via Twitter (and to friends via Facebook).

Last of all – if you have managed to get to the end of this post – head over to RailRights.eu and help me and fellow bloggers to keep an eye on Europe’s railways and improve matters for passengers!

The train was even organised by Deutsche Bahn Charter and wow, what a wonderful bit of publicity for the railways! Look at how green everyone can be by taking the train!

Stop. Just stop. The shameful double standards here are laughable, and not least because Ishida works for East Japan Railway Company and probably flew to Brussels to be in the picture…

No, the real shame is that this special is about the only genuinely long distance service to leave from Brussels. Try getting to Copenhagen on a regular service and it needs a change in Köln and in Hamburg, and a boat from Puttgarden to Rødby.

Longer journeys are better overnight, but apart from an irregular ski train for a few months a year there are no night trains from Belgium at all – nothing since the very same Deutsche Bahn stopped running the Paris – Berlin / Hamburg train through Belgium in December 2008. The reason then was a dispute between DB and the Belgian SNCB about rates for access to the Belgian network, a dispute that does not look like it has been resolved.

Try the daytime trains and it’s a little better, at least just into Germany. Here there are at least some services – 8 Thalys services a day from Paris Nord to Köln via Bruxelles Midi, and 3 ICE services from Bruxelles Midi to Frankfurt/Main Hbf via Köln. Apart from 30km or so between Aachen and Düren the high speed line between Bruxelles and Köln is now more or less complete.

So it’s all fine? Of course not.

The Thalys PBKA railsets, essentially TGVs designed by Alstom, are allowed to operate at 300km/h in Belgium, but only 200km/h in Germany, and have no clearance at all for the Köln-Frankfurt HSL. For the Siemens made ICE3s it’s the inverse – max 250km/h in Belgium (SNCB cites the danger of flying ballast and downforce), 250km/h on Köln-Aachen and 300km/h on Köln-Frankfurt. Seriously, what the hell is all of that about?

OK, when things work the service is reasonable, but how much government money has been invested in those lines which no train can used to maximum speed along its whole length?

Then try it when things go wrong – as they have quite a lot recently – and things get even more laughable. I turned up at Gare du Midi to take the 0725 ICE to Köln on Saturday 16^th January. I get to the station and I’m told the train is cancelled. No ICEs to Belgium at all for the first two weeks of January due to bad weather the guy informs me at the ticket office, although by 16th January most snow had gone in Belgium. “Deutsche Bahn doesn’t have enough trainsets at the moment, so they are keeping the ICEs in Germany” he told me – not sure if this is the true reason but it’s illustrative that a SNCB employee even says it. If this is true, is it profit driven – DB makes more cash from domestic services – or it’s that they are more fearful of reputation damage of FAZ or Süddeutsche has a go at them than if Le Soir does? Interesting and annoying in any case.

Anyway, what else can I do I ask the guy? “Well you should have checked your train was running before you left home” he says, typical Belgian approach to customer service. Hold on, I booked via the net, DB has my e-mail address, has known for 10 days my train will not run… yet no communication. Eurostar revisited.

So then what? You’re lucky the guy tells me, there’s a Thalys in half an hour, and this time you will be allowed to board it. This time I’ll be allowed to board it? Yes, there are some free seats he tells me, normally you would have to take an IC to Liège, a regional train to Aachen, and then a regional train to Köln. What a prospect!

Yet Thalys and DB are both members of Railteam, a get-together of 6 high speed rail companies that are supposed to together promote high speed rail. DB cannot get its act together to organise a replacement train, even from Aachen (powered at 3kv DC, so open to Belgian locomotives – why not redirect a 200km/h Eupen bound IC train with Class 13 locomotive to Aachen..?), and Thalys is refusing to take DB passengers as a matter of course. Seriously, what is the point of Railteam then? Strikes me it’s more like Railmutiny. Compare that with DB’s approach to replacement trains in Germany – 200km/h ICs replace ICEs – and it all looks highly negligent.

To cap it all there was a major signalling problem at Aachen on the day I travelled, so the Thalys only managed to get to Welkenraedt and from there someone (DB? SNCB? Thalys?) managed to hire a couple of city buses to take us on towards Köln. Of course it took 30 minutes before the buses left, we were all on foot for 80km or so in a city bus on the German autobahn, and the promised destination – Köln – was not Köln, but Horrem, a suburb with a S-Bahn station.

Rather unsurprisingly the Thalys employees had scarpered off the buses faster than their trains can run, so I actually was the one who directed passengers to the trains – as a responsible trilingual rail nerd I worked out fastest which RegionalExpress would get us swiftly to Köln…

Yet again this is Eurostar revisited – if there is a problem, what are the procedures? No-one seemed to know, and for sure no-one wanted to inform the passengers what was going on or take responsibility for anything. They had even told us to get off the Thalys at Liège, only to then tell us to get back on again and go as far as Welkenraedt.

I suspect there’s even more to this whole saga than the rudimentary stuff I can determine here through persistence and logical thinking, and somehow it strikes me that the whole liberalisation of European railways into the next decade is going to inevitably just lead to a big scrap between SNCF and DB, just as airline liberalisation has forced consolidation of the airlines. Is not as if passengers were served especially well by the old monopolies when it came to international travel but we have some way to go until a new, and hopefully better, equilibrium is established.

Last but not least, the Community of European Railways (CER) is looking for a communications officer for its Brussels Office. Shall I make an application?

SNCF staff gossip at Lille Europe - J. Worth

Eurostar has not been running for 3 days and has been roundly criticised for not informing passengers what’s going on. In that climate you would have thought that other train operators would have been especially attentive to customer service in the event of delays. Oh no, not even close.

Sarkozy even called in Guillaume Pepy, boss of SNCF, to ask for an explanation of the Eurostar mess. Perhaps Sarko could also ask how SNCF can provide such shockingly bad service on its own trains too.

Yesterday I took SNCF TGV 9834, scheduled to depart Bruxelles at 15h20, final destination Marseille St Charles, via Lille Europe and Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The screens at Gare du Midi showed no delay, TGV due to depart on schedule. Passengers board. More and more board, including, as it turns out, passengers also bound for Perpignan whose train had been cancelled. And then… nothing. The train did not move, no announcements were made, until a small word on the tannoy told us the doors were closing – a full 40 minutes late.

5 minutes into the journey a further announcement told us that bags must not block the doors, but not a word was said about the delay and no apology was made. A stressed elderly lady sat beside me in the train bemoaned the fact that she would already have missed her onward bound connection.

We arrived at Lille Europe 40 minutes late, still no explanations, and some passengers disembark. An announcement tells us the train is supposed to be attached to another train, but there’s no explanation of when we will leave.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands and went to ask the train staff gossiping and smoking on the platform (pictured). I’m told the second train will arrive in 5 minutes. I ask why passengers in the train have not been informed and the response is a shrug of the shoulders of the SNCF employee I spoke to.

The first announcement to passengers in the train that there was a delay was made at 17h07, precisely 61 minutes after the train was due to have left Lille Europe, and 1 hour and 47 minutes after the train was due to leave Bruxelles Midi.

I’m not letting this lie I thought, so as soon as the train left I was determined to speak to the train manager (Chef de Bord). Two of the platform gossipers walked through the train just after departing Lille and I asked them who is the Chef de Bord. We are they said. The conversation (in French) went roughly like this:

Me: I would like to know your names, because I would like to make a complaint to SNCF?
Them: Why? What’s the problem?
Me: Because the train is now very delayed, and we have received no information about what is happening, and that is not acceptable, and for the complaint I need to know who is responsible. That is why I want to know your names.
Them: We are not allowed to give you our names.
Me: So who is actually responsible for communication then?
Them: But isn’t it clear. The train is late.
Me: Yes, that’s clear. But why have we not been informed? We’ve been delayed for more than 1 hour.
Them: Listen, mister. We announced that there was a delay [at 17h07! - see above] and an hour ago we were still at home. That was not our responsibility.
Me: So please tell me who actually has the responsibility to tell the passengers what’s going on?
Them: Where are you travelling to?
Me: Charles de Gaulle Airport
Them: What time’s your flight?
Me: It’s at 8
Them: So what are you getting angry about? We will be there in plenty of time for your flight. And we have said why the train is late.
Me: Look, I am only taking this train because I have been delayed 3 days due to the Eurostar mess, and the problem was that no-one was told what was going on.
Them: Look, why are you getting angry? There’s no point. Have a nice day, mister.

I also have some of the audio recorded on my iPhone as well.

But seriously, what the hell is that? SNCF exists to get its passengers from A to B in as smooth and pleasant way as possible. It does not exist to keep a pair of smug and lousy train managers in a job. And why – if the Chef de Bord is responsible for the train – do they not wear name badges, and are not willing to give their names?

I don’t even have a problem with the fact that the train was 85 minutes late by the time it arrived at Charles de Gaulle, but I want to know what’s happening. Even a ‘we are awaiting the arrival of a further train and do not know when we’ll leave’ would be better than nothing. It’s not hard!

[UPDATE 4.1.09]
Just minutes after Euonym posted her comment I’ve received this New Year greeting from SNCF thanking me formy ‘confiance’ and ‘fidelité’… Ouais, merci bien!