In the morning a rendezvous on the Champs-Élysées, in the evening in the Viennese night café – with this sung schedule set the band Kraftwerk Half a century ago, a musical monument to the “Trans-Europ-Express”, a luxurious express train across Europe.
If the EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas has his way, European high-speed trains will soon be covering completely different daily distances: Anyone who gets on the train in Mannheim one morning in 2040 will be rolling across the Tagus estuary to Lisbon by sunset.
In November Tzitzikostas laid his ambitious plan for a European high-speed network before. By 2040, the EU states should develop continuous corridors from Tallinn to Lisbon and from the Arctic Circle to Palermo. They should further densify the network by 2050; overall, Brussels wants to triple the number of routes.
The focus is on southern and eastern Europe, some of which do not yet have a single high-speed train running. Trains will then run at 250 km/h between important junctions; very few trains in Germany can travel that fast.
More rapid expansion should discourage travelers from flying and encourage them to use significantly more energy-efficient rail. Because climate protection is what matters rather backwards in the transport sectorwhile Europe’s energy industry has significantly reduced its emissions.
If the climate targets are met in the energy and industrial sectors, transport could will soon be responsible for almost half of all European emissions, experts predict. The vast majority of flights in European aviation are on routes that could be taken over by high-speed trains. That would correspond to around forty percent of the emissions from all flights from Europe, a study calculated.
The Back on Track association also gives an impression of the scale, estimating that an expanded night train network could save up to twelve percent of traffic emissions. The main prerequisites for this are competitive prices, reliable travel times and private sleeping compartments.
Member States pay the lion’s share
The Commission expects 345 billion euros to be spent on expanding the rail network by 2040; the complete expansion will cost 550 billion euros. Next year, the Transport Commissioner wants to agree on financing with representatives of the Member States, the European Investment Bank and industry.
The only thing that is clear so far is that the EU should participate through guarantees and a fund for trans-European transport projects. This pot could grow significantly with the EU’s upcoming long-term budget: to 51.5 billion euros. Projects such as the Brenner Base Tunnel or the Rail Baltica from Warsaw to Tallinn in Estonia are currently being co-financed.
Support should come from the European Investment Bank come. It can issue guarantees to attract private investors. Brussels transport politician Kai Tegethoff (Volt) makes it clear that this is not about privatizing the rail network. The model is the Spanish network operator Adif, which co-finances individual projects through green bonds.
However, Transport Commissioner Tzitzikostas will have to collect a large part of the money from the member states. The investments could definitely pay off for them, says economist Laura Porak, who researches the economic potential of transnational train transport at the University of Linz – especially for countries with a competitive train industry such as Germany and Austria.
Nevertheless, Porak has doubts that the necessary money will be collected. Many governments are currently under austerity pressure because EU fiscal rules prohibit them from taking on new debt.
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Criticism comes from mobility NGOs
Economist Porak considers the fact that Tzitzikostas also wants to bring private investors on board to be short-sighted: “If Brussels guarantees investors a return in line with the market, this money will have to be found somewhere, probably from the fares.” As a means of transport for the wealthy, the railway is of little ecological use.
Criticism of Brussels’ rail plans also comes from Transport and Environment, the umbrella organization of European mobility NGOs. The EU spends most of its resources on symbolic mega-projects such as Stuttgart 21 or the Brenner base tunnel, Association employees calculated.
However, the money would be better spent on standardizing and, in particular, electrifying the entire rail network. For example, electrically powered trains often cannot run continuously on the planned corridors in the Western Balkans, and there is little progress in closing the gaps in electrification.
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The railway network is like a patchwork quilt
The fact that train journeys across Europe are often slow and inconvenient is not just due to the lack of routes. Europe’s rail network is like a patchwork of track widths, voltages and traffic management systems. This once protected the individual states militarily against each other, but today it makes train journeys through Europe more expensive, slower and sometimes impossible.
Since the 1990s, the European Union has been trying to unify the fractured system. With mixed results: a certain gauge width, the standard gauge, has since then largely implemented in the European core network. The digital traffic management standard, on the other hand, which is intended to smoothly interlink trains and rails across national borders, is spreading very slowly and in a multitude of technical forms, which further drives up costs.
Transport Commissioner Tzitzikostas now wants to advance harmonization and give the European Railway Agency more powers. Among other things, it should uniformly regulate which trains will be allowed to run in the future. According to European Parliamentarian Kai Tegethoff, Tzitzikostas will also have to fight for the money for the railway agency – and even then she could only set a framework.
The decision on the nationwide introduction of the standards is made in the individual countries. At least at Deutsche Bahn Digitalization is currently not a priority; the aim is to renovate the dilapidated rail infrastructure first.
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The rights of passengers should be strengthened
Brussels has more control over bookings and passenger rights. If you travel by train through several countries, you currently have to buy tickets from several railway companies – and worry that all trains will be on time.
Passengers often have to pay for a replacement train after a missed connection: the money is gone, regardless of who is responsible for the delay. In the spring, the Commission wants to present a law that is intended to strengthen the rights of passengers and create clarity as to who is liable in such cases.
The goal: A ticket that is valid for a connection across borders – and that rail companies can offer on a comprehensive platform. Deutsche Bahn wants to fulfill this wish from Brussels to some extent in the coming year and bring at least all of the major rail operators in neighboring countries into the DB Navigator.
However, it is questionable whether Deutsche Bahn will voluntarily accept smaller and little-known providers. Tzitzikostas wants to set a binding framework for tickets in which several operators are involved. Anyone who wants to take a train from Mannheim to Lisbon would have at least a few fewer worries.