Learn from the Dutch

In RAIL 855’s Open Access, Bob Newitt wrote that advance tickets are vital to reach the goal of more passengers switching from road to rail. I doubt that’s true.

I am a frequent railway user in different European countries. The most successful railways in Europe are operated by the Swiss and the Dutch. Both have no advance ticketing and no seat reservation. But they do have cheap tickets.

A lot of Swiss (in some regions, 40% of the population) have a railcard offering 50% off fares -

all day, all trains. SBB also offers free travel cards.

In the Netherlands you have different railcards: always a discount (20% peak, 40% off-peak); only off-peak a 40% discount; and free travel cards for the network or a route.

Also in the Netherlands, a lot of cheap (less then 20 euros) day rover tickets for travel on the whole network are sold in supermarkets, department stores and drugstores. Those rover tickets are valid off-peak Monday-Friday and whole day at weekends, on all trains and all operators!

And there’s almost always a seat available, because they have high frequencies from early in the morning until midnight. A train every hour, on most routes every 30 minutes, and on busy routes every ten or 15 minutes.

The UK needs cheap tickets, higher frequencies and more seats, without seat reservations, advance booking or other customerunfriendly time-consuming systems. And maybe you need a national railway again, like the successful Dutch and Swiss.

In the Netherlands, on some regional lines there was a 60% increase in passenger numbers after the frequency changed from one to two trains an hour - all day, every day.

Last month I travelled for a whole day on British rail. I saw inter-city services that were crowded and almost 100% reserved, even off-peak. Regional services were slow, and not often enough. And worse, there were severe delays and cancellations. And ticketing is complex. Very bad. Ronald Vergeer, the Netherlands