Europe’s high speed rail network is about to get bigger, faster and cheaper, under new EU plans

34 comments
  1. If it’s true that the target for 160 km/h for core lines (non high-speed) is to be reached by 2040, that’s not enough. We should be pushing for it in around 10 years, not 20.

    For the lines which don’t have big obstacles like long bridges and tunnels upgrading to those speeds should not require so much time. Sure it will be expensive, but the experience and expertise is already there, we just have to share it and get moving with the money. 20 years for such a target is snail’s pace.

  2. Is there someone here good enough with maps? I think we should set up a website – maybe based on OpenRailwayMap – where enthusiasts could thoroughly discuss and carefully design Europe’s future high speed rail network. We need people from all countries and all walks of life to create such a perfect map it can then be submitted to the EU authorities in six months or one year. Someone?

  3. Uh huh, is it going to include the Iberian peninsula, or is the south-western corner of europe going to be ignored because screw us? This is a European Union, not just a Central-European Union, is it not? We’re not Iceland or another island, it makes total sense to connect the peninsula to the rest of europe through rail.

  4. Not a word about privatization of rail ? It has been a disaster everywhere in the world except Japan. France was recently forced to open its lines to foreign operators and I expect nothing but a travesty of a service within the next years. We will either nationalize or federalize train companies in the next 20 years or it will die.

  5. Flying is, frankly uncivilised.

    Give me a bottle of wine and a 6 hour train ride any day over a “2 hour” flight

  6. Trains aren’t much of an option for Portugal, particularly to use it to leave the country. And that’s probably the case for other peripheral countries, like Greece or Finland.

  7. Trains have big fixed costs, so the price per person gets cheaper with each extra passenger per trip.

    I wonder why sleeping compartments have to be so much but expensive, whilst in countries like Ukraine they can be affordable for locals.

    I wonder if current trains are much lighter than in the past. The cars are getting higher in order to save on energy needed to run them. Are trains as well?

  8. Good news all around. Short-range flights as some would say is a climate bane, and the best way to get people to move away from them is to provide a viable alternative.

  9. Massive subsidies to car infrastructure and non to public transportation is the choice that was, and still is, being made.

  10. I wouldn’t mind some things the Americans have. But if we’re talking about highspeed trains, yeah, Europe better not become more like America.

  11. Can wait when I can travel from baltics to rest of EU by train… Every day stay at some nice place. Not big fan of flying, it’s good for time saving but it’s much nicer to travel by train especially when you can stay in different places.

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