Ironically in Europe we have some decent regulation for airlines, but the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well.

But the governments of the big operating companies have vetoed this so far. Sometimes deregulation actually makes it easier to implement regulation.

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eterm 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the best things to happen lately in the UK is "Delay Repay": https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/help-and-assistance/compensat...

Made it much easier to get compensation for delayed and canceled trains. ( Of which there are many ).

It's not a significant amount for minor delays, but it makes traveling on trains just that little bit less miserable.

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hedora 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your trains are at least 10x better than US airlines from a passenger perspective.

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hannasanarion 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Train operators aren't as strictly regulated because they can't do as much harm, both in terms of the inherent catastraophic consequences of air travel disasters for passengers and bystanders, and in terms of the financial risk that passengers take on by purchasing a ticket. A no-refunds-for-cancellations policy on a $100 intercity train ticket that rarely ever cancels hits different from a $400 flight itinerary that cancels multiple times a week because of normal weather.

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panick21_ 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think that's true. If you book a connection that involves multiple high speed trains across multiple country you can easily pay 1000s of $. Its actually more then many direct flights in Europe.

And for example if you take TGV from Paris to the German border, and you have to get on an ICE. If the TGV is late, you miss the connection to the ICE, and have to sleep in the border town, TGV doesn't have to pay.

And missing connection is quite common, specially because Germany is ... not very German.

In terms of safety, a train accident can kill 100s of people. They just don't happen very often.

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jen20 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you compared the cost of a train to a flight in Europe? Often the flight is _substantially_ cheaper, especially in the UK.

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lxgr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well.

Huh? We do!

There are very similar EU regulations for train travel: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

On a completely unrelated note, I recently noticed that Deutsche Bahn seems to have some of their train schedules staggered by 58 minutes instead of one hour – which means that the 25% refund for a delayed arrival due to a missed connection that didn't wait will usually not kick in :)

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panick21_ 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn't say there was no regulation what so ever. But there were multiple efforts of increasing it that was blocked. And what I specifically noted that the rights are weaker then for airlines.

If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that.

Airlines are forced to compete on price and have to publicly list prices and make that accessible to 3rd parties. Train companies do everything in their power to silo as much as they can to force costumers into booking threw their app.

	▲	lxgr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Airlines are forced to compete on price and have to publicly list prices Which regulation requires airlines to do so? I was under the impression that airlines mainly make their inventory available via GDSes for historical reasons (for decades before direct online booking, airlines would sell most of their tickets through travel agents, which needed unified interfaces). There are some low-cost airlines that don't embrace GDSes and force you to use their app as well (I've been bitten by that once when booking through a "non-cooperative OTA/reseller and not being able to access my boarding pass), and conversely, I think some train connections are selling tickets to travel agencies these days. > If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that. Sure? EU regulation 2021/782, article 20 would disagree: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...