this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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And still here in Europe they are not a meaningful alternative to the plane. Taking for example an Amsterdam to Barcelona is an exhausting 12-14h deal (almost 10x as long) and 5x more expensive.
What we need is express trains that go from A to B without stopping anywhere, avoiding city centres and constantly running max speed. If I'm going to Barcelona I don't want to stop in Schiphol, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and various cities in France. There should just be a dedicated departure just for that (and judging by how many planes go back & forth daily these trains could certainly be filled). This would cut down on that exhausting travel time a lot. But we lack the high-speed network capacity for that. And won't have it for at least 15 years even if they decided to build them now :( So planes it is.
honestly I wouldn't mind it taking 12 hours, but it also being more expensive just doesn't make any sense at all. Europe needs to stop subsidizing air travel and needs to up its rail subsidies
Yes. In Italy train travel, and especially bus travel, is still somewhat affordable. In most other places you feel just stupid in paying 100€ to cross 300 kilometres when you can go much farther with 30€ on a plane...
Twelve hours to get across a whole continent is fine.
I think we must stop thinking of the whole world being just a few hours away. Travel has to include some actual travelling again.
Amsterdam to Barcelona isn't crossing an entire continent, though.
And you still haven't countered his point about planes being faster and cheaper.
Let's stop being tribalists and look for real solutions to real problems, eh?
spoiler
Just kidding, I know that's asking too much of you people.The will never be enough capacity to connect capitals with no intermediate stops. And let me tell you, it's in general a stupid idea.
12h is not a big deal if travelled overnight. Which is currently not possible. So this what we really miss, not constant 300 km/h direct connections.
And of course, we need to stop taxing passenger rail companies. And maybe re-nationalise them, while we are at it. Forcing free market in the railway has been one of the biggest mistakes of the European Union.
Do you mean demand? Currently there is not enough capacity.
Counter-examples to your negativity are found in Japan, Korea and China.
There are no such examples for what the user I replied to is proposing.
They want one high-speed train per each European capital.
There was a concept I thought was neat. Imagine around stops you had a parallel set of tracks with cars that would connect to the train and passengers would have X number of minutes to transfer between the parallel trains before they decouple.
So a 'fast lane' train wouldn't actually stop, it would just couple to another train that does pretty much nothing but transfer passengers to and from the stop.
Though the reality is that would require a lot of work when the counter argument can be "fly a plane direct instead"
The Nightjet trains from La Spezia (Italy) goes both to Wien and München, as it splits in Villach.
On the opposite direction, the train from München is coupled with the one from Wien.
Why is it not done more often? Because coupling trains is a security operation, and it takes time (1h+).
On top of that, modern trains are a fixed composition that you cannot couple and decouple as you like.
Note this concept was about a hypothetical design and infrastructure. That coupling would be horizontal and occurring while moving and using train designs that didn't yet exist.
I said interesting, not necessarily practical. It's something we might have tried to do if we didn't have direct flights as a viable option.
I think 12h is a big deal, for business travelers it makes the whole trip pointless. And for leasure travelers it means paying for a really expensive sleeping cabin or "sleep" in an uncomfortable seat.
I agree the privatisation was a big mistake, also in healthcare, energy etc.
Privatizing is always a mistake. Profit is waste and theft. Making public services for-profit is inevitably going to turn to shit.
I agree completely. I wish more people did :( In Holland in particular, neoliberalism is like a religion and nobody even questions it anymore.
The LowTech Magazine disagrees
Interesting, well-written and nerdy report from 2013! I wonder if the aspects of the trans-European rail situation (pricing, travel times, frequencies, interconnectivity, train changes etc.) have gotten better or worse since then.
Interconnectivity did not increase at all. Ironically it's countries like Slovakia which still have a parvence of that.
And Switzerland, of course, is doing fine.