The segment of long-distance, high-speed and night trains are in direct competition with bus and airline services. The critical competitive disadvantage of rail is late ticket sales. While bus operators open ticketing ca 5 months in advance, the airlines do it even 6-11 months in advance.
There are two main reasons for late rail ticketing:
- Too late annual timetable capacity allocation: due to unharmonised national deadlines and late planning of TCRs (Temporary Capacity Restrictions - works on the infrastructure), the allocation is done depending on the particular country from the end of August to November. The timetable change is on the second Saturday in December. Almost all RUs stated in their response that this is not satisfying the market needs.
- Unstable planning of Temporary Capacity Restrictions (TCRs): there is an extensive number of Late TCRs and changes in TCRs by IMs (for various reasons), the situation in Europe is found to be close to catastrophic, and calls for fast reaction. Due to this fact, each RU has to decide if either:
- Takes the commercial risk and opens the ticketing. If the timetable is changed later by the IMs due to new or changed TCR, the RU suffers financially and faces complaints from passengers. Note that in case of personal contact details not recorded when selling tickets (for instance when the ticket is sold in paper form at the ticket counter), it is impossible for RUs to inform the passenger about the changed timetable – thus, it sometimes happens that the passengers arrive to the departure station and the train unfortunately already left earlier :( . Some passenger RUs reported that even in the online sales, part of passengers do not provide their real contact details to not be tracked. Everyone has right to do so, but that makes impossible to get update about the timetable change.
- Waits until the IMs provide the final TCR-period timetable: which can be very late to provide a competitive ticketing opening, compared to buses or airlines who do not face this problem.
FTE passenger RU members show below the current situation with the ticket opening. Two situations are listed, the first shows when the ticketing for the new annual timetable period can start (so for instance when you can book your ticket for Christmas), the second shows how much in advance you are able to book a ticket already once the new annual timetable period sales is open. In order to increase rail competitiveness to a sufficient level, the timetable for long-distance, high speed and night trains shall be stabilised by IMs the latest 6 months in advance.
Start of ticketing in the new annual timetable
RU | Second half of September. |
RU | Beginning of September. |
RU | Beginning of November. |
RU | For international trains: beginning of October, but it happens quite often that it is postponed due to late allocation to November. For national trains: beginning of November |
RU | Beginning of November. |
RU | Middle of October. |
RU | Beginning of November. |
RU | First week of October. |
RU | Middle of October. |
Start of ticketing during the running timetable period
RU | For long-distance/night trains: 180 days in advance. The biggest challenge is the TCR periods, this problem occurs in the networks of all IMs where we run our trains. The selling period is often reduced to less than 30 days. |
RU | Usually 120 days in advance. For some days, the TCRs are not fixed even 120 days, so we wait until the TCR timetable is given. We would wish to open ticketing much earlier if the timetable is stable. |
RU | For international trains: 60 to 90 days in advance For national trains: 60 days in advance |
RU | For international trains: 60 days in advance, due to TCR planning. We would wish to open ticketing 180 days in advance. For national trains: 30 days in advance, due to TCR planning. We would wish to open ticketing at least 90 days in advance. |
RU | 180 days in advance. But the final TCR timetable for some trains comes after the tickets are sold and there is the need to inform the passengers about the time-change / alternative connections. |
RU | 60 days in advance. If the IM announces the TCR, sales are immediately blocked, until the timetable is received. It also happens that the IM announces a late TCR only few days prior to the departure, when a lot of tickets are already sold. |
RU | 120 days in advance. When a TCR is announced, passengers are contacted via email or phone if possible. |
RU | 180 days in advance. The goal is that the CER ticketing roadmap project allows the extension of the sales to 6-12 months in advance. |
As you might have noticed, inappropriate TCR planning is one of the main reasons, why railways are not competitve. This is the reason why FTE, ERFA and Allrail call for change, see the joint TCR paper. Luckinly, the problem is already in the attention of the European Commission, which proposed to make a specific EU delegated act in 2024 to more strictly regulate European TCR planning.
You can find more similiar capacity evidence in the document: Input to the Impact Assessment (Further Evidence)
And you can also find more FTE positions on TTR on our dedicated page.