Sir — In the April issue it was mentioned that passengers arriving at a Paris station could spend 30 min buying tickets for their onward local journey (RG 4.08 p249). I am not surprised.
France, with all its high-tech solutions, is decades behind Germany's City-Ticket and Sweden's Resplus. However, I recall that you can buy a Paris Metro ticket in the buffet of Thalys trains - but perhaps not on a TGV?
The matter of the 'last urban mile' is one of the focus areas of LINK, the European Forum on Intermodal Passenger Travel (more details at www.linkforum.eu). It is in fact the theme for one of LINK's Working Groups with experts from both local and long-distance transport
In LINK as well as in related projects we have found that the realisation of a seamless journey is not just a technical matter, there are lots of practical and organisational barriers to be dealt with.
Bertil Hylén
VTI Transport Research
LINK partner
Stockholm/Linköping, Sweden
