Railteam

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Railteam

Motto	High Speed Europe
Formation	July 2007
Type	High-speed rail alliance
Headquarters	No single location
Location	Europe
Membership	7 operators
Website	www.railteam.eu

Railteam is an alliance of seven European high-speed rail operators. The aim of the group is to offer integrated high-speed rail travel between major European cities and to compete with airlines on punctuality, environment, pricing and speed. Coordinated departures are intended to give consistent travel. The members of Railteam plan to launch a consistent ticketing system on a single website in 2009, as well as offering mutual membership of customer loyalty schemes and access to business lounges.^[1]^[2]

Railteam plans to increase high-speed rail passengers from 15 million a year currently to 25 million by 2010.

1 Members
2 Services
3 Cooperation
4 Competition
5 Train franchises
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Members

Currently, Railteam consists of seven Western and Central European operators. Their official website states however that they are open for more operators joining.

Deutsche Bahn (25%)
SNCF (25%)
Eurostar UK (10%)
NS Hispeed (10%)

ÖBB (10%)
SBB (10%)
NMBS/SNCB (10%)

Cross-border rail operators Thalys, Lyria and Alleo are associate members.^[3]

[edit] Services

The services therefore include ICE, TGV, Eurostar and Thalys trains.

[edit] Cooperation

The European Commission insisted that members of Railteam continue to compete on prices.^[2]

[edit] Competition

The Railteam alliance is the answer of the highspeed train operators on the growing pressure of the airline alliances like SkyTeam, Oneworld and Star Alliance. In addition Railteam uses the same terminology in their communication like hubs, a joint frequent traveller programme and reciprocal lounge access between carriers.

The alliance intends to focus services around five main hubs (Brussels Midi, Lille Europe, Stuttgart, Cologne and Frankfurt ), with multilingual staff and lounges accessible by members of any partner's frequent traveller programme from 2008. Other hubs may open in the future.