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Go and Compare: Eurostar 25 years on, a Tale of Two Cities with new Rail/Air links, and how rail connections for foreign travel can help the environment. The British Royal Eurostar meets the French Presidential Eurostar nose to nose for the opening ceremony at Calais on 6th May 1994. Ours got there first!
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In the latest of our Go and Compare series, Ian Brown takes a bus from Zagreb to Ljubljana and compares it with the rail alternative, then travels from Ljubljana to Trieste by train and compares it with the bus alternative. The competition - the Flixbus on the properly signed stand on arrival at Ljubljana, going through to Florence arriving late the same evening.
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Athens is a great city to visit and travel around. Despite the debt crisis but stimulated earlier by the 2004 Olympics the city has an excellent transport system with innovation precipitated by the lack of finance. We can learn from this for the Rail Review. The Athens card is all mode and comes as a contactless ticket for single journeys and day tickets and longer periods. Note the pictogram of modes available and the Metro showing at a lower level. It includes bike parking.
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A modern Trenord low platform double deck accessible train. The picture was taken at Come Ferro Nord station. Staffed with a waiting room, toilets and a really nice snack bar. Photos by Ian Brown CBE, Chair European Passenger Group.
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InterRail just got better this year – could it be even better in 2017 to celebrate its 45th anniversary? Photo: U-Bahn station, by Nigel Perkins.
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Railfuture’s Director of Policy, Ian Brown CBE was invited to visit Berlin for a few days in June, travelling out on the day of the Brexit referendum announcement. His first visit to Berlin saw the Berlin Wall come down, this visit ironically saw the barriers begin to rise. He took the opportunity to have a good look at the transport system, take photographs of good practice and compare the system with London.
Photo: Berlin's new Hauptbahnhof, a practical symbol of Germany's modern railway. |
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New York, like London, has a complex metro system as well as an expanding network of suburban and main line rail routes.
Railfuture Policy Director, Ian Brown CBE spent time in New York in May on various jobs which included invitations to visit depots, control centres, rail projects and stations. It was a great opportunity to use the system quite intensively and to compare it with London’s rail transport network. Photo: The "Oculus" Is this a station or a work of art? You can build a fine station for 4 billion dollars. This is the exterior of the new World Trade Centre station still partially under wraps which opened in April this year. The bird like design is a statement rather than a practical station roof. As expected it has become very controversial, but the station has potential for growth and is expected to rival Grand Central station as a destination in its own right. An artist’s impression of the completed structure is also shown. |
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Prague has a reputation as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe (even if graffiti appears to be everywhere) but arriving in Prague on a long-distance train doesn’t give a good first impression of the Czech Republic’s capital city, especially if doing so at night. The above photo shows the view on a very dimly-lit platform. |
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In April 2016 a group of Railfuture members visited Nice in the south of France, having taken a train from London. Place Garibaldi (centre photo, above) has been pedestrianised since the introduction of the initial 8.7km Nice tram system in 2007. At this point the tram lowers its pantograph and is powered by batteries. Birmingham Victoria Square will also be catenary-free when Midland Metro opens its extension to Centenary Square in 2019. All photos taken from Wikipedia. |
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Washington DC has a developing network of Metro routes and suburban and long distance rail routes. Railfuture’s Policy Director, Ian Brown CBE spent a week working in Washington in April and took the opportunity to examine the Metro network, visit Washington Union main line station also travel on the two suburban rail systems as well as Amtrak’s Regional main line service to New York.
Photo: Restored glory in the form of the concourse at Washington Union station. The station serves as a hub for long distance and commuter services serving the City with good interchange on to the Washington Metro. |
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Moscow is served by a huge system of long distance and suburban rail, an efficient Metro and tram system. Railfuture’s Policy Director, Ian Brown CBE, gives his impressions of using the system over a few days in April 2016 and visiting four of the main line stations.
Photo: Best practice station design. Many Moscow metro stations are extremely ornate. Here is an example of one which is not but shows best practice in terms of station design. Total access to the length of the train. No clutter. Escalators at each end. |
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Many railway passengers spend time nervously hoping to catch a train. However, Railfuture director Jerry Alderson spent a day in Vienna hopping to catch a train thanks to an accident that left him with a cast (bottom right photo) and hobbling around on crutches. Becoming a person of restricted mobility, albeit only for a couple of months, opened his eyes to how transport systems fail to cater properly for all their customers. His experience will certainly influence Railfuture’s campaigns to improve the rail-based systems in Britain. In highly respected and advanced countries such as Austria the trams dating from the 1960s (top left photo from “Wiener Linien Blog” – all others by the author) are already being scrapped and modern trains are replacing the high-floor 1980s ones (bottom row) but passengers must still “mind the gap”. |
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Railfuture campaigns for a bigger and better railway in Britain – one that is modern, innovative, welcoming and meets the growing expectations of passengers. There are a mountain of ideas that can be emulated from railways around the world. Salzburg provides a good starting point. |
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International rail travellers either love the SNCF jingle or hate it. Our policy director Ian Brown really quite likes it if not always what follows it!
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The front page and an impressive map from a discussion paper from the European Passengers’ Federation produced mainly by volunteers from Britain’s Railfuture and Germany’s Pro Bahn.
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