ALLRAIL

ALLRAIL (Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants) is the Brussels-based European association representing independent passenger rail operators, open-access companies, and ticket retailers. It was founded in April 2017 and has held official EU representative body status since 2019.

ALLRAIL was formed as a joint initiative between the European Rail Freight Association (ERFA) and a group of non-incumbent passenger operators including LEO Express, RegioJet, MTR Nordic, NTV Italo, Westbahn, and Trainline. It now has around 40 members. The founding impetus was the absence of a dedicated lobbying voice for operators competing against state-backed incumbents in passenger markets beginning to open under the 4th Railway Package.

Policy positions

ALLRAIL’s core agenda is non-discriminatory market access across the full rail value chain: track capacity, rolling stock financing, maintenance facilities, and ticket distribution systems. On distribution, ALLRAIL has pressed for structural reform requiring dominant incumbent-controlled booking platforms to include competing operators’ tickets — a position that gained legislative traction with the EU Commission’s 2026 passenger package proposing new multimodal ticketing rules.

ALLRAIL also engages on rolling stock access and ERTMS deployment timelines, arguing that the cost and complexity of ETCS onboard retrofits disproportionately burden new entrants relative to incumbents with larger fleets and state support structures.