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We’re launching a bold plan to make high-speed rail the fastest, more sustainable way to travel across Europe by 2040.🚆
It’s a realistic timeline to remove bottlenecks, unlock investment, and harmonise rail systems.
For passengers, this means:
⌚ Shorter travel times
💺 Faster, more comfortable, and reliable trains
🌙 Expanded night train services
For destinations in #Germany, you should use the ~ sign in front. Because with #Deutschebahn, you can never be sure how long it will take to reach your destination, or if you'll reach it at all 🙃
@EUCommission good luck with Deutsche Bahn lol
also an amazing improvement between Amsterdam and Berlin, considering this train will be at least 1 hour late
@EUCommission how is this good news?
Is this going to fix the need to buy multiple separate tickets?
Is it going to decrease price?
Will it unify the handling of dogs on trains?
Will that get rid of spains ridiculousl "look how plain like our trains are" approach?
Is it going to fix deutsche Bahn and tren Italia's reliability issues?
Who needs high speed rail?
A trip from Warsaw to Madrid is impossible for mamy many reasons and the decrease from 27 hours to 20 hours is not going to help
@EUCommission (as a French citizen) France train network is stupid, one should be able to go from Madrid to Paris without going to fucking Paris wtf. The empty area is so obvious on the map.
@EUCommission Great to see that the EU high speed #rail network is being boosted! But for a 15 year plan, this is not very ambitious. In order to be competitive compared to flights, rail connections need to be much faster - at least 150km/h on average. Amsterdam-Berlin should not be more than 4 hours.
@EUCommission
But you have to build around Germany. Otherwise it won't work. Here in Görlitz, people have been waiting for electrification for at least 35 years!
From Poland it has been suitable for ICE since about 2009...
@EUCommission
It took me almost 4 hours from Görlitz to Berlin the other day! It is about 200 km
@EUCommission
Sorry, I don't believe that Germany is a reliable partner of this project.
@EUCommission 12 hours from stockholm to warsaw. or 2 hours by plane.
@EUCommission Adopting the Hungarian ticket system where everyone over 65 travels for free, would be a popular move! Older visitors to Hungary love it!
@EUCommission *cough* Missing the Mediterranean line there, just connecting to Madrid?
Well, fuck off then.
@EUCommission Competing prices with airline tickets maybe. Otherwise this train plan is not going to fly.
@EUCommission GOD yes gimme the baltic rail, ideally nonstop to warsaw or berlin
I don't appreciate how Finland has been excluded from this plan.
@EUCommission
@EUCommission So, you're abolishing the SNCF?
@EUCommission completely omitting Switzerland which is smack in the middle?
Well, maybe it is to avoid humiliation as the SBB-CFF-FFS has to turn it down due to the severe shortcomings in quality.
That will be useful for people living in states capitals and having to go to an other capital.
@EUCommission
Ok, that the plan for 2040. Originally 4h Berlin-Copenhagen eg. was planned for 2029. But now there seems to be a delay on the German side of the Fehmarnsundtunnel until 2032
@EUCommission this is worse than useless. Will all rail travel in western Europe be routed through Paris? Am I hallucinating the various high speed lines currently under construction? Why not show high speed lines currently in development such as the LGV Montpellier–Perpignan, or are those already cancelled?
@EUCommission with information like this, disinformation is redundant
Since I see you boosting this, @pluralistic,you might be interested in this critical blog post: https://gruene.social/@jon/115496155413125476
@forteller @EUCommission Am I missing something? That "critical post" just seems to be a guy saying, "I'll believe it when I see it." Is there a substantive critique somewhere?
@pluralistic @forteller @EUCommission There's a more detailed critique here
https://jonworth.eu/when-a-plans-not-a-plan-and-a-revolution-isnt-a-revolution-european-high-speed-rail/
When a plan's not a plan, and a revolution isn't a revolution - European High Speed Rail - Jon Worth
@statsguy @pluralistic I'm sorry! I thought the toot I linked to had a link to that blogpost.
@pluralistic If you see one, let the rest of us know. (I stopped reading the reply-guy posts when I got to the "They're abolishing the SNCF!" pearl-clutcher.)
That said, what I glean from most of the replies, though, is:
"We want trains! And more of them! Now, or preferably sooner!"
🚂
@EUCommission a few suggestions:
- Easier ticket purchase and pricing structures
- more options to bring your dog (and have a chance to let them pee during stopovers)
- option to bring cargo bikes (i mean, people used to bring an entire car, let me bring my 30-50kg bike so I can haul kids and dogs around at destination)
- all the above should also count for night trains
@EUCommission this (and some more details) is what we would have needed to get away without a car as a family with kids and a dog.
@EUCommission yes, please! Mobility for humans <3
@EUCommission Dublin: + 26hrs +bus transfer +traffic...
Oh and + passport control.
@EUCommission
Wel bijzonder dat de Nederlandse hogesnelheidslijn geen deel uitmaakt van het Europese plan van hogesnelheidslijnen. Is dat bewust?/
@EUCommission
How will you manage railing through germany?
@EUCommission Nobody is interested in Paris-Bratislava any more. german politics/DB claimed we need this connection and therefore #Stuttgart21
@EUCommission It's bold plan indeed. All reasonable people support this idea and I support it as well. However there are couple of good points already mentioned here. Only one East-west corridor via Berlin, what is Czechia doing? There should be southern corridor also.
Another massive improvement for customers would be centralized system for tickets purchase. All carriers integrated to one portal, languages, requirements, useful travel info. We can do this by 2040 right?
@EUCommission super nice. Why is there no mention of making it affordable for poor people?
OK, right.
I forgot we don't care about them. Never mind.
@EUCommission Awesome but 15 years for minor improvements is too long. The plan for, e.g., Balkans, where the travel would become twice as fast, seems decent. But 15 years to go from 5:45 to 5:30 for Berlin-Amsterdam sounds daunting. (Also I took Berlin-Amsterdam this year it was 8h lol). We can do more and faster for Central, Northern, and Western Europe.
@EUCommission If we can do Copenhagen-Stockholm in 4 hours surely we can do better than 5h30 on Amsterdam-Berlin? There's already an ICE train on that track we just need to modernize the track between Amsterdam and Hannover ;-).
@EUCommission Make it even faster. Trains are the best. 🚄🚃🚃🚃
@EUCommission Another thought: Would you please let a train expert from Switzerland or Austria arrange and manage all this? They seem to be the only ones who know how to do trains.
@EUCommission Can we add affordable tickets to the plan?!
Taking the train within Europe is more expensive than flying while it's emitting way much more than trains! If we want to encourage people to take the trains, prices also need to follow.
Indeed @AudreyBras. High-speed rail must be competitive and affordable. Experience in countries like Spain and Italy shows that greater competition leads to lower prices and more passengers. To achieve this, we will tackle infrastructural, commercial and technical barriers, including rolling stock availability and access to service facilities. By removing these obstacles, we aim to foster the development of new rail services and open the market to more companies.
@EUCommission @AudreyBras the same old neo-liberalism rhetoric: you should know by now that a working train system is not profitable, and creating competition degrades the service even more. stop subsidies and tax privileges for airlines, this might help a "fair" competition.
@EUCommission Reliable and affordable public transport should be a public task and not be submitted to competition and markets.
@AudreyBras
@EUCommission Interessant mais tout va dépendre du secteur national. Quand on voit les lenteurs pour passer les frontières, les retards sur les réseaux nationaux, il y a du travail à faire.
@EUCommission
I want the Letterkenny- Sligo -Galway - Limerick - Cork -Lannilis - Paris rail route.
OK there is no western rail or motorway in Ireland (everything is a spoke of Dublin) and we'd need a 425km bridge or submerged floating tube (not impossible).
Of course if UK was in the EU a link to Wales would be saner and easier than tha NI - Scotland link.
Also maybe Ireland has a wider rail gauge? It's wider than GB..
@EUCommission
Don't you think that the shafts Madrid-Paris and Rome-Paris are a bit long, with nothing in between?
@EUCommission I think I’ll wait for @jon’s analysis before getting too excited about this
@EUCommission Paris is not only a bottleneck but a large detour for many connections in the South and additionally super annoying because of the mandatory change of train station including a transit with the metro.
There should be some effort to have a high speed East-West connection South of the Alps!
And yes, please, make booking in one go, on one website possible!
@EUCommission Can we be a lot more ambitious ?
So if I read well your amazing plan, in 2040 we will be able to go from Paris to Zagreb by train in 17,5 hours. By car it take around 13 hours.
A.M.A.Z.I.N.G don't change anything.
Or maybe we can tax kerosene and raise airport fees and use that money to do real investments in public rails ? WDYT ?
@EUCommission to be bold, put dedicated money from the MFF behind!
@EUCommission Just by looking at your map of high-speed rail plan (so not having checked existing connections) an east-west connection (e.g. Vienna <-> Paris) would be awesome 🚄
@EUCommission all these connections should be direct connections without intermediate stops?
@EUCommission
Cool! Can you harmonise ticket prices and buying processes so that I can buy a ticket from Valencia to Brussels in one go please?
Also some slow night trains would be cool, especially if linked up to some of the high-speed day services.
Hi @brunogirin, this is in the pipeline! Early next year we will propose legislation to improve cross-border rail ticketing and booking systems, which includes a single ticket booking plan for train travel. This will make it easier for citizens to shift to more sustainable travel options and help achieve our climate objectives.
@EUCommission
Cool thanks! Any plans about night trains for long distances? Travel time is less of a problem if you can do some of the journey while you sleep. I did Amsterdam to Berlin by European Sleeper a couple of years ago and it was excellent.
@EUCommission
sounds neat, but we'll have to nationalize Deutsche Bahn
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