Europe and train travel go together like sunsets and the Seine. That is: perfectly. The continent boasts some of the world’s most scenic stretches of railway and overnight cross-country sleeper services – but one thing that there could be more of is access to high-speed rail. At least, that’s what the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) is campaigning for.
The CER has proposed an ambitious scheme that would see every major city in Europe connected by high-speed rail, Euronews reports. The group’s executive director Alberto Mazzola told the news outlet that he expects the European Commission to announce their support for the scheme later this month.
Capital cities will be the first to be linked
‘We have been working for four or five years as an association on this,’ Mazzola explained. The vision is to first bring together capital cities in the EU, before expanding to ‘all large cities and urban agglomerations of around 250,000 inhabitants.’ All in all, this would amount to more than 49,400 kilometres of track and cost roughly €546 billion.
Trains could travel at around 250 kilometres per hour, which would allow you to get from Athens to Istanbul in under four hours. Mazzola envisages a future where trains are ‘the backbone of travel’, and says that the European Commission’s Sustainable Transport and Tourism Committee is supporting an expansion of rail travel as part of its plans to encourage greener forms of transport.
In countries like Germany, Spain and France, high-speed trains are pretty common – and thriving. These nations could lead the way and provide the blueprint for the rest of the EU where this technology exists at a more limited scale. The project will require an immense amount of improvements to the infrastructure, which is outdated and, in many places, not fit for purpose.
EU plans to triple high-speed rail by 2050
Mazzola explained that ‘today we have less rail infrastructure than after the Second World War’, which can have a damaging effect on local economies, causing stagnation and preventing growth. Essentially, it’s not as simple as simply laying high-speed tracks and buying a bunch of trains; things like bridges, stations, and roadways will need to be upgraded first.
The goal is to have things up and running within the next 20 years, in line with the EU’s goal to triple high-speed rail by 2050 (according to the CER’s official position paper). But no official announcements have been made by the European Commission yet. We’ll have to wait and see what it says at the end of October to find out when this mega-project could actually break ground.
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