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EURO RAIL ROUTE MAP UPGRADE

Train travel is one of the best ways to explore Europe – the continent is fairly compact so it’s easy to get around and there’s a wide network of train routes and rail passes available, so you can just sit back and soak up the views. * This site contains affiliate links, where I get a small commission from purchases at no extra cost to you. *Note: It’s a misquote from Field of Dreams (1989), in which Kevin Costner’s character hears a voice say, “If you build it, he will come,” the person in question being baseball hero Shoeless Joe Jackson.Explore Europe by train with five of the best European rail trip itinerary ideas you can do in just one week, covering Northern Europe, Italy, Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal, and Scandinavia. įollow Strange Maps on Twitter and Facebook. So perhaps this utopian map of Euro Night Sprinters racing across the continent may turn out to be a map of the future yet. Or they avoid the stress of having to manually negotiate hundreds of miles of road traffic. Passengers avoid out-of-town airports and instead depart from and arrive at city centers. For many, it is a more relaxed way of getting from point A to point B. Mostly phased out decades ago because of easier air and road travel, they are now being phased in again precisely because they are climate-friendly alternatives to planes and cars.īut sustainability is not the only argument in favor of train travel. While night trains are still rarer than they used to be, they are making a comeback across Europe. Given enough investment in rail, the EU could replace almost all of its top 250 short-haul flights by rail travel, saving 23.4 million tons of CO 2 equivalents per year, which is roughly the annual CO 2 emissions of Croatia. Greenpeace calculated that banning short-haul flights in the EU and shifting to rail where alternatives under six hours already exist would cut emissions by 3.5 million tons of CO 2 equivalents each year.

yet only just over a quarter (27 percent) of those flights have direct night train alternatives.Įarlier surveys show 62 percent of Europeans would support a ban on short-haul flights, and significant majorities in various European countries want to take more night trains instead - if reasonably priced.fully one third (34 percent) of the EU’s busiest 150 short-haul flights have train alternatives with journey times below six hours.According to a recent study by OBC Transeuropa that was commissioned by Greenpeace: When it comes to sustainability, rail certainly has its benefits. ( Credit: Enrico Spanu / REDA&CO / Universal Images Group / Getty Images) It’s a nice view to fall asleep to as you take the N21 sleeper to Marseille on the as-yet entirely fictional Euro Night Sprinter network. That is essential to make travel by rail more competitive.Ī train crosses the Dom Louis I bridge in Porto, Portugal.

Last but not least, for the rail network to function, there needs to be an end to tax breaks for airlines.One current example is the Brenner Base Tunnel, scheduled for completion in 2032, which will reduce the journey time by rail from Berlin to Rome from 14 to 12 hours.

EURO RAIL ROUTE MAP UPGRADE

The network would also need investments to upgrade old rail lines and develop new ones.

Also essential: a uniform, user-friendly booking platform, allowing customers to book a multinational trip on a single ticket, which currently is often impossible.

Using Dijkstra’s algorithm, the Greens have calculated that most journeys on this map would take between 9 and 14 hours.

The network would need night trains traveling comfortably and quietly across Europe at 200 to 250 km/h (125 to 155 mph), with necessary upgrades to the rolling stock financed by the European Investment Bank.

This would be along the lines of Eurocontrol, the continent’s air traffic agency.

Such a network would require a unified control and coordination system for Europe’s various national rail networks, as requested by the European Rail Agency.

The map was first published in the run-up to the German elections in September, as part of a proposal by the German Greens for a Europe-wide network of night trains. Rather than hammer on those no-nos, this map, and the proposal it illustrates, focuses instead on a positive alternative. So, that means no more zipping across Europe in your gas-guzzling SUV or plane-hopping from city to city. Transport is a major emitter, notably from road and air. That requires massive cuts in the emission of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases. Disastrous floods in Germany and apocalyptic fires in Greece have helped cement the conviction across Europe that climate change has started, is catastrophic, and needs to be mitigated.