@lina that's not how trains in EU work, you board the train and you just wait for the conductor to get your ticket checked, and even then if you aren't in some crazy country like France, they just don't give a shit about your designated seat, you have to wait for someone to get you out of it, if you are on the wrong one
on the cheap trains we have something similar where if you board without a ticket you can just buy one on board, and they don't have designated seats, you just find a place (which can be hard)
and on (most of?) "good" trains theres a designated conductor for every carriage that checks the tickets, etc
...actually i'm not sure, maybe IC/IC+ is like the EU ones.. been a while since i rode one
@lina here on every train you don't really have a designated seat, unless it came with your ticket or you bought it separately, and of course there's none of this on regional trains
@lina there are some trains where you need a reservation for the whole journey, like polish EIP/pendolinos or some IC trains but that's because they don't have any "standing places" in homologation documents 🥴, and also international trains where you need it for the border area, because the system is broken and apparently it is cheaper this way
@lina and usually if you have a ticket for more than one trip, these standing place tickets come in handy because you will find a seat, don't you worry about that there's always a bunch of seats for cyclists which are mostly empty, and those tickets without reservations are still vital if you don't want to make those people go in a car because otherwise you just lock the train to reservations only, and prices go up
@lina and there's no incentive for them to make the train longer because look, train has every seat reserved! that's good! except it's not and you are limiting everyone from travelling on that train train is overcrowded? they will have to do something about it eventually, not now but at some point they will fix it, while those reservation required trains send a false signal
@lina market liberalisation is or will be one of the requirements to join the EU since that's already happening here, however the laws on this are so flawed you might end up with situation like in Poland where tenders are made but it's made so late that only the incumbent company can win it
@lina and it depends on who is stagnating, because like, in one way they are getting better, and tbf Ukraine has a lot of catching up to do around railways anyway, one other point is that if joining, Ukraine will be the 5th country with soviet/imperial gauge, and a separated one from other 4, so it's not like the liberalisation will suddenly happen because that's a big barrier to enter the market if you want to go in as cheap as possible (speaking of regiojet or other pseudo-operators)
@jeder actually i remember seeing some article comparing european operators and according to prices from the app, UZ was almost always ~2x cheaper than the cheapest european operator.. might be hard for them to enter the market unless they have some great service (or new trains and good service), because the majority probably won't use trains that are marginally better but 2x more expensive
@jeder ...also if we look at how UZ is operating rn they'll be forced to drive up prices to roughly match the european operators since the passenger trains are a very large expense of theirs, subsidized by cargo operations
...this might nullify my previous point about them being 2x cheaper but no way of knowing yet ig
or maybe we already have other cargo railway companies operating here and it's gonna be fine, idk
@lina PKP Intercity and regional operators are cheaper than DB, ÖBB or NS because Poland is poorer than Germany, Austria or Netherlands ČD is roughly similar to PKP Intercity, prices are a national matter, they are not mandated by the EU, international ticket prices are mandated by the running companies but even then both operators will have its discounts, which is how tickets for Vienna-Prague trains are cheaper through ČD rather than ÖBB
my main concern was "more regulations and/or anti-monopoly stuff -> UZ bending to EU's will -> making everything more expensive to cover some of the new costs -> prices are now comparable to e.g. PKP Intercity -> PKP Intercity has better trains with comparable prices -> ..."
which, now that i think about it, might theoretically be somewhat good for me as a consumer since competition and i can actually vote with my wallet
@lina the thing is, competition will not really happen if there's no will of it from the government and hypothetical competitors, government can block them through railway offices,, competitors themselves can submit open access applications but they can do nothing about them if they get accepted (which is a case with like 99% of approved regiojet and leo express applications in poland)
@lina if the competition shows up in the form of publice service contracts for regional or intercity lines, the service might actually degrade if said competitor decides to do some creative accounting when applying for the PSC tender
@jeder this kinda reminded me of how uber eats tried working here and stopped in i think less than a year because no one was using it since there’s better alternatives
