So, what happened in Hungary in 2024?

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#UTKComparesRailPrices

Okay, so the methodology for the core price comparison (this is meant to show the wisdom of Open Access, is it) is that they took the one of the most important domestic routes in each country, looked at the highest-category trains, on midweek Tuesday-Thursday dates in November-mid-December, between 8 and 10 AM. They compared prices 30 days ahead (Polish booking horizon yay) and 1 day ahead, in 2nd class or whatever equivalent could be found, non-refundable where that was an option, converted to Euros.
Now, the choice of routes is… kinda interesting. (trains divided as in original report)
PL - EIP Warsaw-Kraków (who would've guessed - please keep in mind that those are significantly more expensive than other trains in Poland)
High-speed:
FR - TGV InOui Paris-Marseille
ES - AVE Madrid-Barcelona
IT - FR Rome-Milan
SE - Snabbtåg Stockholm-Gothenburg
TR - YHT Ankara-İstanbul
Non-high-speed:
DE - ICE Berlin-Hamburg (how much are you willing to bet they picked this one specifically to avoid what high-speed rail Germany does have?)
CH - IC Zurich-Geneva
FI - IC Helsinki-Tampere
HU - IC Budapest-Debrecen
GB - London-Birmigham (I'm not going to call it an IC like they do)
AT - EC Vienna-Graz (predates Koralmbahn)
CZ - EC Prague-Brno (so in these two cases they've clearly opted to avoid routes with developed open access competition… But not in Spain or Sweden?)

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#UTKComparesRailPrices

@HaTetsu Any price comparison methodology based on cherry-picked examples is doomed to be highly biased. Reminds me of the Greenpeace piece last year (https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/climate-energy/47717/low-cost-flights-up-to-26-times-cheaper-than-trains/).

For an accurate comparison we need a holistic price database, but as we often discuss here in the #bahnbubble that requires strong open data regulation 😉