Efforts to make the Commission greener and hence more reliant on rail for business travel (‘missions’) make perfect sense.  Unfortunately, they quickly hit a buffer – pun intended. In fact, you often don’t even run the risk of boarding a train in the first place. This is because, for those of you using the online booking tool (NEO) and the travel agency behind it, there is no offer of suitable train journeys. Even though the NEO shortcomings are well known, nothing has changed. 

For those of you booking your own transport, keep doing what you’re doing. For those of you who appreciate a challenge, read on.

As Generation2004 has revealed already in 2019, while NEO’s search function returns a considerable number of train stations, for many, if not most of these train stations, NEO does not offer any rail connections whatsoever. 

Now, one should think that the user guide would be of use. The search hangs in vain, should you ever venture to. In fact, the only information on these matters in 2019 came from an Excel sheet on IntraComm. The file lists train destinations that can be booked by the tool.  However, this Excel list was rather limited: only Belgium, the Netherlands, stations served by TGV and Eurostar trains plus a couple of places in Germany were included.  Here are a couple of examples to highlight the inconsistencies and limitations: 

• Although the two largest German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, as well as Leipzig are covered by the tool, they are missing from the Excel list. 

• Luxembourg, the second largest Commission site, is also not listed in the Excel sheet but is present in NEO. Maybe the developers thought Luxembourg is only a Belgian province? 

Anyhow, the Excel-sheet seems to have disappeared from IntraComm by now, whether by design or just accidentally we do not know, but the inadequacies of NEO have remained five years down the line. 

It all leads to the tool being useless for rail travel for most Commission sites outside of Belgium. In fact, the worst part is the tool’s positively misleading experience that is offered to its users: at first it gives you hope and then crushes it with an iron “rail” – another pun intended. 

In 2019, we didn’t explore the possibility to book a train directly via the travel agency.  Now, we have investigated also that possibility. And in order not to burden the travel agency with unnecessary requests, this was done in the context of a return from a real mission from Luxembourg to Ispra (Lugano being the nearest railway station).  

To cut a long story short: The result was discouraging. 

As the purpose of the mission was to attend a meeting that was due to end at 13:00, the travel agency was asked to provide a train connection from Luxembourg after that time. What was offered instead were two connections leaving Luxembourg at 7:15 and 9:00 in the morning. And a third one leaving Luxembourg at 19:10. But the latter required the traveller to do a stop-over from 01:00 to 05:00 in the morning in Basel. Sure, Basel has a very nice train station, but spending four hours there in the middle of the night is not everyone’s idea of a relaxing business trip. 

Irony aside, the problem is that even the travel agency is not able to find all the connections that really exist, let alone book them. So here is what you get if you look on www.sbb.ch, the homepage of the Swiss Federal Railways: 

Dep 13:39 Luxembourg   (TER 88519, Direction: Metz Ville)
Arr 14:29 Metz Ville  
Dep Metz Ville (11min Change train)
Arr Metz Ville
Dep 14:40 Metz Ville   (TER 830309, Direction: Strasbourg)
Arr 16:10 Strasbourg  
Dep Strasbourg (11min Change train)
Arr Strasbourg
Dep 16:21 Strasbourg   (TER 96227, Direction: Basel SBB)
Arr 17:38 Basel SBB Platform 31
Dep Basel SBB (25min Change train)
Arr Basel SBB
Dep 18:03 Basel SBB Platform 5 (IR 26 2335, Direction: Bellinzona)
Arr 19:45 Arth-Goldau Platform 5
Dep Arth-Goldau (4min Change train) Arr Arth-Goldau
Dep 19:49 Arth-Goldau Platform 4 (IC 2 885, Direction: Lugano)
Arr 20:58 Lugano Platform 2 

And if you believe that the departure time is a bit early for a meeting finishing at 13:00, there is another possibility just two hours later, which still takes you to Lugano on the same day. 

The only remaining small problem is to actually book the tickets. For the Swiss part, this is rather straightforward and can be done via the above webpage. The real challenge is to buy a ticket from Luxembourg to Basel and then onwards to Lugano, because for reasons unknown, no through tickets are offered from Luxembourg to Lugano. Instead, one must book a ticket from Luxembourg to Metz and then another one from Metz to Lugano (a prerequisite which is nowhere explained). 

The question is how many colleagues will try to overcome the above challenges rather than just book a flight? 

Not that many in all likelihood. If the Commission therefore really wants to promote sustainable travel then it must provide to staff the tools, which make that possible. Mere declarations are not enough. 

As always, we would love to hear from you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us or leave a comment below.

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