2/22
Berner Tage – Passenger Transportation

The revised Passenger Rights Regulation (PRR), latest decisions in passenger transport and multimodal solutions and challenges for the contract of carriage were some of the highlights of this year’s Berner Tage and CIV session dedicated to passenger transportation issues.

Legal and practical aspects of the revised PRR

In the first block of contributions, participants received an overview of the results of the PRR revised (Regulation (EU) 2021/782) and analyses of legal challenges arising from the revision of the regulation by Alberto Gallo from Trenitalia. The major changes in the PRR revised include a significant reduction of exemptions from the regulation, new requirements on transportation of bikes and legal consequences in case of lack of bike services (re-routing, assistance, compensation), legal consequence in case of failing to inform passengers about re-routing possibilities within 100 minutes, the inclusion of a force majeure clause in case of payment of compensations and completely new requirements on through-tickets.

This comprehensive review was followed by a presentation by Jan Vavra from the CIT on the status of PRR implementation works in CIT’s products, including the amendments to the GCC-CIV/PRR (contractual conditions), the AIV (multilateral agreement on after-sales related to the CIV and PRR), the MIRT (manual on ticketing) and to the MCOOP (boilerplate contracts on cooperation between railways).

This block was concluded by a presentation of Fabrice Setta from UIC on new requirements on through-ticketing in the activities of UIC in this respect: OSDM (Open Sales Distribution Model), URT (Universal Rail Ticket), FCB (Flexible Content Barcode) and eTCD (electronic Ticket Control Database). These tools are sector-driven solutions enabling to issue through-tickets based on the revised PRR regulation. 

Latest decisions in passenger transport

Oliver Hirschfeld (DB) opened the curtain in the truest sense to interesting cases and court decisions: The first case happened during the pandemic period: a dispute between a passenger and DB for not wearing a protective mask. In the second case a passenger complained that SNCF trains are not sufficiently accessible for passengers with reduced mobility (PRM) and demanded compensation from SNCF for suffering due to the inaccessibility of toilets in TGV trains. The last case presented by Oliver Hirschfeld showed the complexity of multimodal transportation whereas passengers missed their plane because of delayed connected train.

Multimodal solutions and challenges for the contract of carriage

Luca Mariorenzi from FS and Stefano Scarci from UIC closed the session with challenges related to multimodal solutions. They demonstrated the complexity of the distribution chain, underlining the roles in multimodal scenarios as well as actions to open standards and solutions to non-rail actors, suggesting three possible transport models (contractual solutions). The general presentation was concluded by practical examples how the sector contributes on multimodal solutions with Air + Rail and Door to Door projects. 

nina.scherf(at)cit-rail.org
jan.vavra(at)cit-rail.org