About a year ago, I brought up a new concept business.....Locomore....which was a private railway situation that would use the Bahn railways and Locomore' s trains for a particular route (Stuttgart to Frankfurt to Berlin, and back each day). The deal was centered around a low-cost ticket...22 Euro one-way.
At the time, I felt that it was a good idea and might have a fair number of people who would use the once-a-day route.
Problems occurred with the start-up, and financially....they did not seem to be ready for the issues that occurred.
Today, in Hessen news....it came out that Locomore will be taken over by Fixbus and the Czech railways. It'll restart next week (24 Aug).
The general change? Flixbus appears to be the folks operating the ticket business (which they have lots of experience to draw upon).
There is some talk of a start-up ticket (at least for the first week or two) of 9.99 Euro (one-way).
What caused the original failure of Locomore? On paper, I think they made sense. They were operating a theme-like train (each car being different), with pricing that beat the typical Bahn price. The catch was....it ran only once a day. You'd start at mid-morning in Stuttgart, and arrive in Berlin by mid-afternoon....then return by mid-evening to Stuttgart. The reality was that they weren't prepared for the various problems that would come up, and didn't have ready-capital to pay for last-minute maintenance issues. The ticket-business....if you go and read reviews....occasionally hit snags and probably needed more development.
They probably have a year or two with version two of the operation....to prove it can be profitable, or to just close it down and admit the concept won't ever pay off.
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