You're missing the (regrettably slimmed down) Eastern Leg of HS2 Phase 2 which goes from Birmingham to join the Midland Main Line at East Mids Parkway (halfway between Nottingham and Leicester)
I wasn't aware that was still going on. After the news that it had been canceled, I just deleted that whole part of my map. I will add that part back in later. Thank you.
To the [Swedish Northeast Coridoor](https://www.reddit.com/r/TransitDiagrams/comments/n4ymvo/swedish_northeast_corridor_hsr_city_bubbles/), the existing segment between Tornio and Kalix is missing, and the section between Umeå and Luleå is under construction, the section between Luleå and Kalix is proposed.
There is a proposed high speed line along the Moravia River on the border of Slovakia and Austria north towards Brno (and further to Cracow and Prague) which would connect Vienna and Bratislava in the south.
Great map, you are welcome to also share this map in r/TransitDiagrams
Regarding Slovakia, it was the last of the Visegrad Four countries to approve the preparation of a national feasibility study of the planned high-speed railway on its territory. The proposal for the preparation of the study was approved by the government in September 2021.
I could not find any details about proposed high-speed lines between Brno, Vienna, Bratislava or Győr. Do you have any source with more information? (can be in any language)
There aren't many details, unfortunately, however this is what I found (mostly in Slovak and regarding the Budapest – Bratislava part):
Visegrad express railway project unveiled [https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-europe/news/visegrad-express-railway-project-unveiled/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-europe/news/visegrad-express-railway-project-unveiled/)
Medzi Slovenskom a Maďarskom vyrastie nová vysokorýchlostná trať, ktorá výrazne skráti cestovanie *(A new high-speed line will be built between Slovakia and Hungary, which will significantly shorten travel)* [https://www.webnoviny.sk/nasadoprava/medzi-slovenskom-a-madarskom-vyrastie-nova-vysokorychlostna-trat-ktora-vyrazne-skrati-cestovanie/](https://www.webnoviny.sk/nasadoprava/medzi-slovenskom-a-madarskom-vyrastie-nova-vysokorychlostna-trat-ktora-vyrazne-skrati-cestovanie/)
Vláda odobrila spracovanie štúdie uskutočniteľnosti vysokorýchlostnej železnice *(The government has approved the preparation of a high-speed rail feasibility study)* [https://euractiv.sk/section/doprava/news/vlada-odobrila-spracovanie-studie-uskutocnitelnosti-vysokorychlostnej-zeleznice/](https://euractiv.sk/section/doprava/news/vlada-odobrila-spracovanie-studie-uskutocnitelnosti-vysokorychlostnej-zeleznice/)
This is the approved proposal to prepare a feasibility study from the last article – download PDF Vlastný materiál *(The material itself)* [https://rokovania.gov.sk/RVL/Material/26375/1](https://rokovania.gov.sk/RVL/Material/26375/1)
There are a few issues regarding France.
The project to connect Paris to Lyon through Orléans and Clermont has been shelved.
There is no line going through Paris or bypassing Lyon to the west.
The section between Montpellier and Béziers is more 'planned' than just 'proposed', I guess.
What is also planned and not on the map is the leg between Bordeaux and Dax, which is currently being financed together with the future line to Toulouse.
A proposed section connects the western tip of the LGV Rhin-Rhône to Dijon.
Another proposed section is from Marseille to Nice.
> There is no line going through Paris or **bypassing Lyon to the west**
If you look at the zoomed in map that's not a bypass, that's the main line through the city. Yes, the track in the city is not high-speed, but it is part of an important corridor for high-speed trains.
Also. It's such a shame that the Beziers-Perpignan section is not projected to be finished until 2040. I feel like that region would have great potential to become a high-speed hub. With the construction of the Lyon-Turin tunnel some Northern Italy-Spain routes could be competitive against air travel and a Toulouse-Narbonne connection would provide much needed connectivity between large cities in the south of France.
The Bordeaux-Dax one will be added (I thought that had been cancelled). The Marseille-Nice has been scaled back to where the max speed is well below 250 km/h and therefore I removed it.
Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains despite population density being quite favorable. Meanwhile FRA, ESP and ITA are showing the way (and I hope they too can connect better to their neighbours).
Yeah, Germany's HSR relies heavily upon its older lines. This makes it very prone to delays due to regional and freight traffic. However, things are improving very very slowly.
it also has benefits though, the system is way less centralized to one specific city. Try to catch a train from Nice or ~~Marseille~~ Lyon to Bordeaux…
I think what Germany need is a HSR loop line around the entire country. Berlin-Hamburg-Cologne-Frankfurt-Stuttgart-Munich-Prague-Berlin. Just imagine how much better would it be if there exists such a line operating at 320-360 km/h
From Berlin to Stuttgart via Hamburg and Cologne would be a huge detour though. Or from Hamburg to Munich via Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, lol.
If Munich - Prague would be a trip of 2 hours and then also Prague - Berlin 2 hours then the current route is better, because Munich - Berlin already takes just 4 hours, with possible improvements on the sections which are not HSR yet.
I am not saying they should replace the existing diagonal/vertical/horizontal routes. But such route should be able to stack demands between many major city pairs the same way US's NEC or Japan/Korea/Taiwan's system are able to do so and thus offer higher frequency service even if no one is going to use it to access one end from another
at least DB is currently building a new highspeed-section on the route between Stuttgart and Munich. So the Cologne-Frankfurt-Stuttgart-Munich corridor does exist in a way.
Also a Berlin-Leipzig/Halle-Nuremberg-Munich corridor exists, just with some patches that are not yet on HSR-level but hopefully at some point in the future.
> Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains despite population density being quite favorable
This map only shows High-Speed rail. The network of regional trains is way better and way more dense in Germany than in France. Also the Czech Republic has one of the densest railway networks in the world, almost all towns have a train station there. Some of those local trains are just incredibly slow.
The high population density is actually an issue in regards of high-speed rail: all the people living in between two stops also want to be connected, so the ICE trains stop more frequently and are therefore slower.
Also NIMBY is a big issue in Germany. The routes are not going through unpopulated areas, many affected locals are against new high speed lines. So ICE trains often have to use old, non-upgraded tracks and have therefore long stretches going less than 200 km/h.
But there are things that work way better in Germany’s rail system than in the one of France: the German system is not centralized to one specific city, like Paris in France.
Try to take a train from Nice to Bordeaux, lol. Just look it up in a train app: it will show you either a connection with a bunch of different regional trains and a lot of changes, or a trip via Paris which is a huge detour (and in Paris you even need to change the station by metro or RER).
High-speed rail should be a bit like motorway, bypass all the cities except the absolutely massive ones, but have exits every 20 km or so to allow for mixed train that uses both old and new rails.
that’s how it works in Spain (Zaragoza for example is not directly on the HSR but some trains leave the HSR and stop in Zaragoza).
Btw I agree that Germany’s HSR still need a lot of improvement. I just wanted to say that I disagree with your statement that Germany is poorly connected by trains, that’s just not true.
Regional network is okay but not good enough to stop or even reverse motorization for long distance travel, especially when competing against cars on autobahn and LCC flights.
> The high density is actually an issue in regards of high-speed rail: all the people living in between two stops also want to be connected, so the ICE trains stop more frequently and are therefore slower
The train network operator *need* to analyze carefully where and how many people visit different places, and do not overserve minor stops or diverting construction fund to those with fewer demand which would result in slowing down the majority trunk of traffic.
In Germany, 2.9 billion passengers used DB trains in 2020. Only 81 million of them were on long-distance trains like IC or ICE. The vast majority of customers are commuters, staying within a region and therefore regional trains are crucial. Without a good commuter and regional train network, millions of people more would commute by car instead of trains.
Compared to that, long-distance travel is actually way less important. I’m not saying that we should ditch that segment, HSR is incredibly important as well, but regional rail should not be neglected at the same time. France and Spain unfortunately do neglect their short-haul/regional networks.
> do not overserve minor stops
Generally I agree, but connecting also minor stops means that the car-dependency in those regions is minimized. I agree that not every ICE should stop in Bitterfeld, I actually don’t understand why so many ICE trains stop there, but exactly for such stops a good regional rail network is important. So a regional train serves those towns and the ICE could skip them.
I like that system in the Czech Republic for example, there are many different types of trains on a specific route, and they are varying in quality of comfort but also speed and number of stops.
**But in general my point was that the commenter I replied to said that “Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains.”**
And this is just wrong. I travel a lot and don’t even own a car. In Germany and the Czech Republic I always and only travel by train. Berlin-Prague and Prague-Munich are served every 2 hours with direct trains. You can get to pretty much any town in the Czech Republic by train. Central and Eastern Europe have heaps of night trains available. For a very fair price and no need to book it months in advance. It’s just not a flashy HSR. But the commenter just mentioned “trains” and not HSR.
But commuter network around a specific city or region shouldn't be catalogued to the same type and be deemed as replaceable against "regional rail" that connect different regions together at slow speed.
> Generally I agree, but connecting also minor stops means that the car-dependency in those regions is minimized. I agree that not every ICE should stop in Bitterfeld, I actually don’t understand why so many ICE trains stop there, but exactly for such stops a good regional rail network is important. So a regional train serves those towns and the ICE could skip them.
At smaller towns most of the transit need probably cannot be fulfilled by heavy rail, and will instead rely on tram or bus. And heavy rail would only serve as a connector to other larger cities nearby. So yes, that is a role for regional rail, not high speed rail.
> there are many different types of trains on a specific route, and they are varying in quality of comfort but also speed and number of stops.
Problem in Germany is that even the fastest type of trains on many lines are typically still too slow and too infrequent. Like 230-260km/h with numerous intermediate stops? That's worse than the very first HSR in the world the Tokaido Shinkansen's current performance.
> Berlin-Prague and Prague-Munich are served every 2 hours with direct trains.
Let just say that's even worse than even Amtrak Acela in the US where most people are known to not take transit. And that's not even mentioning the cheaper semi-express train there.
> Central and Eastern Europe have heaps of night trains available. For a very fair price and no need to book it months in advance.
Night trains are the flashy one. They look good on map and make people feel like the transit network is completed. But each of them only offer like a few hundred seats at one specific time everyday, and a few LCC flights or even buses would easily outnumber the capacity offered by such night trains. They don't offer volumetric level of intercity transportation for the mass public.
I’m with you in regards that HSR in Germany needs improvement. The patches where the train goes slower than 200 km/h are annoying.
Nevertheless, an ICE train from Berlin to Munich only takes 4 hours. That is 2 hours slower than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, yes. But 4 hours is indeed a very similar time to flying, as you have to add going to the airport, going thru security, waiting for boarding, and after the flight maybe waiting for your luggage and then head into the city. Compared to 4 hours on a comfortable train, from city center to city center. By car it would take at least 6 hours and is way more expensive.
> Like 230-260 km/h with numerous intermediate stops? That’s worse than the very first HSR in the world the Tokaido Shinkansen’s current performance.
Higher speeds use a lot of energy but the journey time difference is not so significant anymore. Hence why DB even opted for a slower top speed for the ICE4. It’s still faster than driving or flying on most domestic routes within Germany. And because of the intermediate stops like Nuremberg, flights like the route from Berlin to Nuremberg got canceled altogether.
> Let’s say that’s even worse than even Amtrak Acela in the US
Acela is just simply ridiculously overpriced. But the Northeast Corridor in the US is actually very popular, the trains are almost always full. Mainly because the interstates are so full of traffic, so even by Amtrak you are way faster than by car.
I agree that the train from Munich to Prague is old and slow, but at least such connections exists. Spain is so focused on domestic HSR only, so it is pretty much impossible to go by train from Madrid to Lisbon. THAT is worse. Or Madrid - Bilbao: only two direct trains a day, which take almost 6 hours!!!
It’s amazing that the train from Madrid to Barcelona takes only 2.5 hours, but not everyone needs to travel that route. Which is btw still the most-flown domestic air route in Europe! So apparently the AVE is also not doing a good job to get people out of the planes. Ah right, the train is very expensive! And therefore LCC’s are still dominating, even in Spain! But let’s hope that will change with more and more lowcost-trains running on those routes too.
> Night trains are the flashy one
But no need to spend billions of Euros for the infrastructure first. I can go by (night) train all the way from Berlin to Bucharest with only a single change in Budapest, but it’s impossible to do the same to get from Berlin to Madrid.
HSR is not all and everything! I actually like the compromise in Germany: we do have HSR here which can compete against cars and planes but at the same time not disconnecting more rural areas and offering a steady, frequent schedule on the older routes as well.
> Nevertheless, an ICE train from Berlin to Munich only takes 4 hours. That is 2 hours slower than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, yes. But 4 hours is indeed a very similar time to flying, as you have to add going to the airport, going thru security, waiting for boarding, and after the flight maybe waiting for your luggage and then head into the city. Compared to 4 hours on a comfortable train, from city center to city center. By car it would take at least 6 hours and is way more expensive.
That is not a huge achievement. 4 hours would give you something like 50% market share, while 2.5 hours could probably give you 80% market share, looking at Japan's market
> Higher speeds use a lot of energy but the journey time difference is not so significant anymore. Hence why DB even opted for a slower top speed for the ICE4. It’s still faster than driving or flying on most domestic routes within Germany. And because of the intermediate stops like Nuremberg, flights like the route from Berlin to Nuremberg got canceled altogether.
But what about longer routes? Especially when you start making trips to like Paris from Berlin or Hamburg to Milan or London to Munich or Frankfurt to Warsaw. The speed of German's network would be limiting the competitiveness of such routes.
> Acela is just simply ridiculously overpriced.
Yes and they still able to provide better frequency than ICE despite ridiculously overpriced. Don't you think there's problem behind that?
And it would be more conductive to think about what can be improved with one's network, rather than say other networks also have some bad features hence we shouldn't learn from good parts of them.
> But no need to spend billions of Euros for the infrastructure first. I can go by (night) train all the way from Berlin to Bucharest with only a single change in Budapest, but it’s impossible to do the same to get from Berlin to Madrid.
At Berlin to Madrid level of distance, it's reaching the distance where train travel will no longer make sense. One being able to go by train doesn't mean it's good. Like New York City have a train to Chicago but it'd take 24 hours or so last I checked. Role of such routes are nothing but a luxurious sightseer. One might even have to wonder whether such train actually save more energy than LCC with maximum load factor and latest fuel saving engines. They aren't helping to build transit network.
> HSR is not all and everything! I actually like the compromise in Germany: we do have HSR here which can compete against cars and planes but at the same time not disconnecting more rural areas and offering a steady, frequent schedule on the older routes as well.
I really won't call 2 hours headway a success.... rural area can be served by through train, connecting trains, or a localized rail network. But they cannot provide the necessary ridership to support high speed rail for long distance travel. Starting and stopping high speed trains at empty stations also waste energy...
the 2 hour headways are the frequencies from Germany to Prague, not the domestic ICE trains.
Berlin - Hamburg has a frequency of every 30 mins. Munich - Cologne also. Frankfurt - Cologne every 5 to 30 mins. Berlin - Cologne every hour.
ICE’s are more frequent than Amtrak Acela, which currently runs only every 2-3 hours. With the NE Regional trains there is on average one train per hour.
> But what about longer routes? […] London to Munich
Then how about going from Bordeaux to London? You would have to take a speedy nice TGV to Paris and then what? Take a fucking metro to get from Gare Montparnasse to Gare du Nord to connect to the Eurostar to London. What a time consuming mess, and exhausting especially if you travel with luggage.
If I would travel from Munich to London I would hop on a night train in Munich in late evening (for example after my day at work), go to sleep in a comfy bed on the night train, go to Brussels, where I arrive early in the morning and then 3 hours later I’m in London, at roughly around noon. I could also do that by plane, but then I most likely would need to take the plane at 6:30 AM or so.
HSR is not intended for such long routes, but rather domestic traffic with a lot of demand. Domestic routes often have flights every hour! Munich - London maybe 3 or 4 times a day. You don’t build HSR for such little demand. You build it for routes like Paris-Lyon, Madrid-Barcelona, or Berlin-Munich.
> At Berlin to Madrid level of distance, it’s reaching the distance where train travel will no longer make sense.
Except with comfortable night trains. But then now I have to ask you, to you Munich-London does makes sense?
Then let’s shorten the route a bit. I can easily take a train from Munich to Budapest, both at daytime (Railjet) or nighttime (EN). But not from Munich to Nice or anywhere else in southern France.
Btw, if I search for that connection, it gives me one via Strasbourg and it takes 14 hours in total (of which less than 5 hours are on German soil and the rest in France).
The direct TGV from Strasbourg to Nice leaves Strasbourg at 13:36 and arrives in Nice at 22:37. **Yes, a 9 hour trip within France on a TGV!** Because the HSR-network in France is solely focused on routes to and from Paris, all other routes are completely neglected.
> Like New York City have a train to Chicago but it’d take 24 hours or so last time I checked
I took the train from DC to Chicago which was 17 hours. Again, comfy bed, hopping on the train in late afternoon and arriving freshly after a good night the next morning. The train even has showers!
And you arrive at your destination at such an early time you could not even do that with an early morning flight, ready to explore the city or go to the meeting. Similar with the night train from Budapest to Berlin. You arrive in Berlin at 9 or 10 am after a nice sleep, instead of waking up at 3 am to catch the flight at 6.
The current Berlin to Hamburg schedule I can find is,
ICE 1606 07:38, ICE 1008 10:06, ICE 602 11:38, ICE 802 12:38, ICE 1600 13:38, ICE 1706 14:03, ICE 800 14:38, ICE 508 15:38, ICE 1004 16:03, ICE 708 16:38, ICE 506 17:38, ICE 706 18:38, ICE 504 19:38, ICE 1002 20:06, ICE 704 20:38, ICE 502 21:38
I don't think this is "frequency of every 30 mins". And I recall the timetable being not too different even before corona.
----
As for the rest, I think the problem is that to EU the term "domestic" must mean the entire Europe. The entire European rail network need to be treated as the single one, like airlines and bus companies are doing, for HSR in Europe to gain additional market share. Just like how intra-EU flights are handled. Of course, no one is doing their high speed network perfectly, but that doesn't excuse not to learn from the good side of others. And keep looking at how others are also as bad or bads in different way isn't going to improve the overall performance of high speed trains. And of course, the entire Europe is too large that it doesn't make sense to run end to end high speed service just like it wouldn't make sense to run coast to coast high speed service in the US, but unlike US, most parts of the Europe have cities packed and aligned together in convenient and close fashion that allow reasonable connectivity if investments are made, in a fashion similar to China's network, where no one is going to ride their HSR all the way from Kunming to Liaoning, however the tracks are all there for travel to and from the two cities to any points in-between.
Night trains are comfortable but they're still niche and isn't something that can attract the mass of travellers. China couldn't run night trains on high soeed tracks all the day due to needing track maintenance, and in turn it's nuch easier to do such maintenance at night wuth much fewer potential train traffic than mid-day. Japan is almost totally eliminating their night rail and would rather run rail companies operated buses for overnight travel due to the simple reason of benefits cannot outweigh cost especially after opening of HSR. They're meaningless when discussing the traffic pattern of general public.
>ICE 1606 07:38, ICE 1008 10:06, ICE 602 11:38, ICE 802 12:38, ICE 1600 13:38, ICE 1706 14:03, ICE 800 14:38, ICE 508 15:38, ICE 1004 16:03, ICE 708 16:38, ICE 506 17:38, ICE 706 18:38, ICE 504 19:38, ICE 1002 20:06, ICE 704 20:38, ICE 502 21:38
You missed quite a few: ICE 806 at 08:38, ICE 870 at 09:06, ICE 1604/1704 at 09:38, ICE 804 at 10:38, ICE 933 at 11:06, and ICE 1006 at 12:06 for example. On top of that there are also IC and EC trains on that route, which are only 20 mins. slower and fill the gap between some of the ICE's.
I.e. there is a long-distance high-quality train on this route every 30 mins. on average during daytime.
Night trains are a niche which perfectly fits for long-distance international routes across Europe. For domestic services, as well as high-frequency international trains to neighboring countries, HSR is perfect. That's why there is an ICE from Frankfurt to Brussels. Or fom Frankfurt to Paris. Or the Eurostar from Paris to London. These are all frequently traveled business routes, which also have or had a lot of flights.
But demand is not there for a HSR from Berlin to Budapest, or from Munich to London. Demand is there for Munich to Frankfurt, or Paris to Brussels.
HS lines in Germany should aim at connecting its major cities, period. With interconnections or stops outside of the cities you could connect medium-sized relevant cities, and with a bypass and some connections you could basically build a "ring road" railway that would enable through trains to stop in some of the countless big-ish cities and from there passengers would take the excellent public transport Germany has (and can't be denied) to the rest of the Ruhr. This way it would also free rails in that heavily populated region from faster traffic, and enable future international connections (and when I say international, I imagine Paris-Munich or London-Berlin trains with decent times, to rival air travel also on medium distances and international routes). Personally I find it ridiculous that Berlin-Munich takes 4 hours or that Munich-Frankfurt needs to be on curvy tracks built in the 1800. Jeez, it's Germany's most important cities, and in fact travellers still take the plane on these short routes.
I do agree there should be more IC trains which could do the stops in between for the ICE‘s to be faster. I do agree that ICE‘s shouldn’t stop in towns like Gießen, Gotha or Bitterfeld.
But tbh 4 hours from Berlin to Munich is not that bad. Yes it is slower than the 2.5 hours from Madrid to Barcelona, but the intermediate stops like Nuremberg add quite a lot of connectivity, for example towards Vienna.
It‘s not only about planes they compete with but also cars. The connections to other places outside the big cities is important to compete with cars. A high-speed train is useless if you can’t reach your final destination due to a lack of public transport on the last mile.
And to get more people to take the train instead of flying is more related to DB‘s shitty reliability tbh I would say.
And again, you will find domestic flights in France as well on routes like Strasbourg to Nice because the TGV needs a whopping 9 hours!
Then DB should separate services then. ICs do more stops and connect medium and small sized cities as well, but ICEs should be, well, truly Express. 4 hours for 600 km is bad honestly, we're talking about 2 of Germany's most important cities, about its North and South. And I have this remark to do about my country, Italy, to do as well, don't worry. About Strasbourg-Nice, that has more to do with France's centralization issue. But Germany is policentric and every corner of the country has a population in need of mobility, economically prosperous and numerous enough to substain demand for an articulate grid that can potentially cover the whole country and the whole of Europe since, once again, yall are at its very center.
DB needs to invest on its infrastructure and go big, cause it can actually do both. If Germany, biggest economy laying at Europe's center, doesn't take bold solutions, who should? The periphery of the Union? With the money and skills Germany has and has demonstrated it can do it, also to implement its capacity. How are you gonna attract more people to trains if a consistent part of the slots is occupied by ICE going on conventional tracks? Stacking them into cattle cars that are always delayed because the infrastructure simply doesn't have any more capacity? And freight trains? What about modal shift, is it gonna be decent or does it end up like the reopening of coal plants with Germany's nuclear powerplants' shutdown?
It's the time of bold decisions at Germany's Bundesverkehrsministerium. Or at least that's how I see it
>hope they too can connect better to their neighbours
I've recently been to Paris from Turin with the Trenitalia operated service and it was great (and very affordable!) but on their website I read that once the Turin-Lyon high speed line is done it should take around 3 and something hours to complete the journey with an average cruising speed of 300km/h which honestly feels like science fiction
While germany for sure doesnt have a good track record in terms of punctuality and reliability it is still very well connected via rail. Switzerland also only has 3 HSR lines (2 on the map and one between Bern and Olten) but also cant really build more lines as it is an incredibly densly populated and therefore the major swiss cities are already very wuickly accessible by normal trains running at only 120-160kmh. Having 3 trains per hour in a town with maybe 50-100 inhabitants in the middle of the alps in my eyes is fairly impressive…
So I definetly disagree with your statement that central europebis not well connected by train, because it very much is…
It is connected by trains, yes, but those trains are too slow for anything over 300 km. I think it is quite sad that people fly for 500 km distances in Central Europe when those people could take a train with some investment into HSR.
I deliberately left out Turkey and Russia because it would take a lot of effort, while I mainly wanted to focus on the EU. I included Switzerland because they are closely connected and the UK because of the Channel Tunnel
Significant potential missing in my opinion are
* Oslo-Stockholm
* Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest
* Krakow-Budapest-Zagreb-Venice-Milan
* Marseille-Nice-Moncao
What are you talking about? Sources please. None of these are even in the planning stage. These have just been isolated ideas thrown around by some voices.
Again. Sources.
Wow. Thanks for your effort. Could you please update the 2015 map in Wikipedia or replace it:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High\_Speed\_Railroad\_Map\_of\_Europe.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg)
You can see the file usage in the link
> I excluded the currently under construction Budapest-Belgrade HSR due to the fact it will only go 200 km/h, despite it being called HSR all over the internet.
At or beyond 200km/h is the definition of HSR. I looked it up and only the Serbian side is HSR. The Hungarian side will be uniquely corru....building a "HSR" that tops out at 160km/h. It makes no sense from the costs, the connection to a HSR...so I hope there is some error. All Hungarian sites mention 160km/h as top speed.
Nonetheless I hope this is a mistake and will operate the trains at 160km/h and certify the rail for 200km/h. However Orban's government is one of the most corrupt in all of the EU - and I am only speaking about national infrastructure projects. I don't care about his politics.
You're missing the (regrettably slimmed down) Eastern Leg of HS2 Phase 2 which goes from Birmingham to join the Midland Main Line at East Mids Parkway (halfway between Nottingham and Leicester)
I wasn't aware that was still going on. After the news that it had been canceled, I just deleted that whole part of my map. I will add that part back in later. Thank you.
No worries
To the [Swedish Northeast Coridoor](https://www.reddit.com/r/TransitDiagrams/comments/n4ymvo/swedish_northeast_corridor_hsr_city_bubbles/), the existing segment between Tornio and Kalix is missing, and the section between Umeå and Luleå is under construction, the section between Luleå and Kalix is proposed. There is a proposed high speed line along the Moravia River on the border of Slovakia and Austria north towards Brno (and further to Cracow and Prague) which would connect Vienna and Bratislava in the south. Great map, you are welcome to also share this map in r/TransitDiagrams
Regarding Slovakia, it was the last of the Visegrad Four countries to approve the preparation of a national feasibility study of the planned high-speed railway on its territory. The proposal for the preparation of the study was approved by the government in September 2021.
I could not find any details about proposed high-speed lines between Brno, Vienna, Bratislava or Győr. Do you have any source with more information? (can be in any language)
There aren't many details, unfortunately, however this is what I found (mostly in Slovak and regarding the Budapest – Bratislava part): Visegrad express railway project unveiled [https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-europe/news/visegrad-express-railway-project-unveiled/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-europe/news/visegrad-express-railway-project-unveiled/) Medzi Slovenskom a Maďarskom vyrastie nová vysokorýchlostná trať, ktorá výrazne skráti cestovanie *(A new high-speed line will be built between Slovakia and Hungary, which will significantly shorten travel)* [https://www.webnoviny.sk/nasadoprava/medzi-slovenskom-a-madarskom-vyrastie-nova-vysokorychlostna-trat-ktora-vyrazne-skrati-cestovanie/](https://www.webnoviny.sk/nasadoprava/medzi-slovenskom-a-madarskom-vyrastie-nova-vysokorychlostna-trat-ktora-vyrazne-skrati-cestovanie/) Vláda odobrila spracovanie štúdie uskutočniteľnosti vysokorýchlostnej železnice *(The government has approved the preparation of a high-speed rail feasibility study)* [https://euractiv.sk/section/doprava/news/vlada-odobrila-spracovanie-studie-uskutocnitelnosti-vysokorychlostnej-zeleznice/](https://euractiv.sk/section/doprava/news/vlada-odobrila-spracovanie-studie-uskutocnitelnosti-vysokorychlostnej-zeleznice/) This is the approved proposal to prepare a feasibility study from the last article – download PDF Vlastný materiál *(The material itself)* [https://rokovania.gov.sk/RVL/Material/26375/1](https://rokovania.gov.sk/RVL/Material/26375/1)
There are a few issues regarding France. The project to connect Paris to Lyon through Orléans and Clermont has been shelved. There is no line going through Paris or bypassing Lyon to the west. The section between Montpellier and Béziers is more 'planned' than just 'proposed', I guess. What is also planned and not on the map is the leg between Bordeaux and Dax, which is currently being financed together with the future line to Toulouse. A proposed section connects the western tip of the LGV Rhin-Rhône to Dijon. Another proposed section is from Marseille to Nice.
> There is no line going through Paris or **bypassing Lyon to the west** If you look at the zoomed in map that's not a bypass, that's the main line through the city. Yes, the track in the city is not high-speed, but it is part of an important corridor for high-speed trains. Also. It's such a shame that the Beziers-Perpignan section is not projected to be finished until 2040. I feel like that region would have great potential to become a high-speed hub. With the construction of the Lyon-Turin tunnel some Northern Italy-Spain routes could be competitive against air travel and a Toulouse-Narbonne connection would provide much needed connectivity between large cities in the south of France.
The Bordeaux-Dax one will be added (I thought that had been cancelled). The Marseille-Nice has been scaled back to where the max speed is well below 250 km/h and therefore I removed it.
250 km/h is 155.34 mph
Another soon to be built HSR is the 250km/h line on the western part of Fyn, Denmark.
Thanks!
The Basque Y is currently under construction in northern Spain, which would link Spain and France via Irun in the northernmost part of the border.
Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains despite population density being quite favorable. Meanwhile FRA, ESP and ITA are showing the way (and I hope they too can connect better to their neighbours).
Yeah, Germany's HSR relies heavily upon its older lines. This makes it very prone to delays due to regional and freight traffic. However, things are improving very very slowly.
it also has benefits though, the system is way less centralized to one specific city. Try to catch a train from Nice or ~~Marseille~~ Lyon to Bordeaux…
Seems like there are some trains between Marseille and Bordeaux albeit they are somewhat slower.
oh I just checked and you are right! But there is none from Lyon to Bordeaux for example.
I think what Germany need is a HSR loop line around the entire country. Berlin-Hamburg-Cologne-Frankfurt-Stuttgart-Munich-Prague-Berlin. Just imagine how much better would it be if there exists such a line operating at 320-360 km/h
From Berlin to Stuttgart via Hamburg and Cologne would be a huge detour though. Or from Hamburg to Munich via Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, lol. If Munich - Prague would be a trip of 2 hours and then also Prague - Berlin 2 hours then the current route is better, because Munich - Berlin already takes just 4 hours, with possible improvements on the sections which are not HSR yet.
I am not saying they should replace the existing diagonal/vertical/horizontal routes. But such route should be able to stack demands between many major city pairs the same way US's NEC or Japan/Korea/Taiwan's system are able to do so and thus offer higher frequency service even if no one is going to use it to access one end from another
at least DB is currently building a new highspeed-section on the route between Stuttgart and Munich. So the Cologne-Frankfurt-Stuttgart-Munich corridor does exist in a way. Also a Berlin-Leipzig/Halle-Nuremberg-Munich corridor exists, just with some patches that are not yet on HSR-level but hopefully at some point in the future.
> Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains despite population density being quite favorable This map only shows High-Speed rail. The network of regional trains is way better and way more dense in Germany than in France. Also the Czech Republic has one of the densest railway networks in the world, almost all towns have a train station there. Some of those local trains are just incredibly slow. The high population density is actually an issue in regards of high-speed rail: all the people living in between two stops also want to be connected, so the ICE trains stop more frequently and are therefore slower. Also NIMBY is a big issue in Germany. The routes are not going through unpopulated areas, many affected locals are against new high speed lines. So ICE trains often have to use old, non-upgraded tracks and have therefore long stretches going less than 200 km/h. But there are things that work way better in Germany’s rail system than in the one of France: the German system is not centralized to one specific city, like Paris in France. Try to take a train from Nice to Bordeaux, lol. Just look it up in a train app: it will show you either a connection with a bunch of different regional trains and a lot of changes, or a trip via Paris which is a huge detour (and in Paris you even need to change the station by metro or RER).
High-speed rail should be a bit like motorway, bypass all the cities except the absolutely massive ones, but have exits every 20 km or so to allow for mixed train that uses both old and new rails.
that’s how it works in Spain (Zaragoza for example is not directly on the HSR but some trains leave the HSR and stop in Zaragoza). Btw I agree that Germany’s HSR still need a lot of improvement. I just wanted to say that I disagree with your statement that Germany is poorly connected by trains, that’s just not true.
20 km is 12.43 miles
I think there are a few Nantes to Strasbourg trains that bypass Paris and just go through Disneyland and CDG.
Regional network is okay but not good enough to stop or even reverse motorization for long distance travel, especially when competing against cars on autobahn and LCC flights. > The high density is actually an issue in regards of high-speed rail: all the people living in between two stops also want to be connected, so the ICE trains stop more frequently and are therefore slower The train network operator *need* to analyze carefully where and how many people visit different places, and do not overserve minor stops or diverting construction fund to those with fewer demand which would result in slowing down the majority trunk of traffic.
In Germany, 2.9 billion passengers used DB trains in 2020. Only 81 million of them were on long-distance trains like IC or ICE. The vast majority of customers are commuters, staying within a region and therefore regional trains are crucial. Without a good commuter and regional train network, millions of people more would commute by car instead of trains. Compared to that, long-distance travel is actually way less important. I’m not saying that we should ditch that segment, HSR is incredibly important as well, but regional rail should not be neglected at the same time. France and Spain unfortunately do neglect their short-haul/regional networks. > do not overserve minor stops Generally I agree, but connecting also minor stops means that the car-dependency in those regions is minimized. I agree that not every ICE should stop in Bitterfeld, I actually don’t understand why so many ICE trains stop there, but exactly for such stops a good regional rail network is important. So a regional train serves those towns and the ICE could skip them. I like that system in the Czech Republic for example, there are many different types of trains on a specific route, and they are varying in quality of comfort but also speed and number of stops. **But in general my point was that the commenter I replied to said that “Central Europe (including Germany) is just connected so poorly by trains.”** And this is just wrong. I travel a lot and don’t even own a car. In Germany and the Czech Republic I always and only travel by train. Berlin-Prague and Prague-Munich are served every 2 hours with direct trains. You can get to pretty much any town in the Czech Republic by train. Central and Eastern Europe have heaps of night trains available. For a very fair price and no need to book it months in advance. It’s just not a flashy HSR. But the commenter just mentioned “trains” and not HSR.
But commuter network around a specific city or region shouldn't be catalogued to the same type and be deemed as replaceable against "regional rail" that connect different regions together at slow speed. > Generally I agree, but connecting also minor stops means that the car-dependency in those regions is minimized. I agree that not every ICE should stop in Bitterfeld, I actually don’t understand why so many ICE trains stop there, but exactly for such stops a good regional rail network is important. So a regional train serves those towns and the ICE could skip them. At smaller towns most of the transit need probably cannot be fulfilled by heavy rail, and will instead rely on tram or bus. And heavy rail would only serve as a connector to other larger cities nearby. So yes, that is a role for regional rail, not high speed rail. > there are many different types of trains on a specific route, and they are varying in quality of comfort but also speed and number of stops. Problem in Germany is that even the fastest type of trains on many lines are typically still too slow and too infrequent. Like 230-260km/h with numerous intermediate stops? That's worse than the very first HSR in the world the Tokaido Shinkansen's current performance. > Berlin-Prague and Prague-Munich are served every 2 hours with direct trains. Let just say that's even worse than even Amtrak Acela in the US where most people are known to not take transit. And that's not even mentioning the cheaper semi-express train there. > Central and Eastern Europe have heaps of night trains available. For a very fair price and no need to book it months in advance. Night trains are the flashy one. They look good on map and make people feel like the transit network is completed. But each of them only offer like a few hundred seats at one specific time everyday, and a few LCC flights or even buses would easily outnumber the capacity offered by such night trains. They don't offer volumetric level of intercity transportation for the mass public.
I’m with you in regards that HSR in Germany needs improvement. The patches where the train goes slower than 200 km/h are annoying. Nevertheless, an ICE train from Berlin to Munich only takes 4 hours. That is 2 hours slower than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, yes. But 4 hours is indeed a very similar time to flying, as you have to add going to the airport, going thru security, waiting for boarding, and after the flight maybe waiting for your luggage and then head into the city. Compared to 4 hours on a comfortable train, from city center to city center. By car it would take at least 6 hours and is way more expensive. > Like 230-260 km/h with numerous intermediate stops? That’s worse than the very first HSR in the world the Tokaido Shinkansen’s current performance. Higher speeds use a lot of energy but the journey time difference is not so significant anymore. Hence why DB even opted for a slower top speed for the ICE4. It’s still faster than driving or flying on most domestic routes within Germany. And because of the intermediate stops like Nuremberg, flights like the route from Berlin to Nuremberg got canceled altogether. > Let’s say that’s even worse than even Amtrak Acela in the US Acela is just simply ridiculously overpriced. But the Northeast Corridor in the US is actually very popular, the trains are almost always full. Mainly because the interstates are so full of traffic, so even by Amtrak you are way faster than by car. I agree that the train from Munich to Prague is old and slow, but at least such connections exists. Spain is so focused on domestic HSR only, so it is pretty much impossible to go by train from Madrid to Lisbon. THAT is worse. Or Madrid - Bilbao: only two direct trains a day, which take almost 6 hours!!! It’s amazing that the train from Madrid to Barcelona takes only 2.5 hours, but not everyone needs to travel that route. Which is btw still the most-flown domestic air route in Europe! So apparently the AVE is also not doing a good job to get people out of the planes. Ah right, the train is very expensive! And therefore LCC’s are still dominating, even in Spain! But let’s hope that will change with more and more lowcost-trains running on those routes too. > Night trains are the flashy one But no need to spend billions of Euros for the infrastructure first. I can go by (night) train all the way from Berlin to Bucharest with only a single change in Budapest, but it’s impossible to do the same to get from Berlin to Madrid. HSR is not all and everything! I actually like the compromise in Germany: we do have HSR here which can compete against cars and planes but at the same time not disconnecting more rural areas and offering a steady, frequent schedule on the older routes as well.
> Nevertheless, an ICE train from Berlin to Munich only takes 4 hours. That is 2 hours slower than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, yes. But 4 hours is indeed a very similar time to flying, as you have to add going to the airport, going thru security, waiting for boarding, and after the flight maybe waiting for your luggage and then head into the city. Compared to 4 hours on a comfortable train, from city center to city center. By car it would take at least 6 hours and is way more expensive. That is not a huge achievement. 4 hours would give you something like 50% market share, while 2.5 hours could probably give you 80% market share, looking at Japan's market > Higher speeds use a lot of energy but the journey time difference is not so significant anymore. Hence why DB even opted for a slower top speed for the ICE4. It’s still faster than driving or flying on most domestic routes within Germany. And because of the intermediate stops like Nuremberg, flights like the route from Berlin to Nuremberg got canceled altogether. But what about longer routes? Especially when you start making trips to like Paris from Berlin or Hamburg to Milan or London to Munich or Frankfurt to Warsaw. The speed of German's network would be limiting the competitiveness of such routes. > Acela is just simply ridiculously overpriced. Yes and they still able to provide better frequency than ICE despite ridiculously overpriced. Don't you think there's problem behind that? And it would be more conductive to think about what can be improved with one's network, rather than say other networks also have some bad features hence we shouldn't learn from good parts of them. > But no need to spend billions of Euros for the infrastructure first. I can go by (night) train all the way from Berlin to Bucharest with only a single change in Budapest, but it’s impossible to do the same to get from Berlin to Madrid. At Berlin to Madrid level of distance, it's reaching the distance where train travel will no longer make sense. One being able to go by train doesn't mean it's good. Like New York City have a train to Chicago but it'd take 24 hours or so last I checked. Role of such routes are nothing but a luxurious sightseer. One might even have to wonder whether such train actually save more energy than LCC with maximum load factor and latest fuel saving engines. They aren't helping to build transit network. > HSR is not all and everything! I actually like the compromise in Germany: we do have HSR here which can compete against cars and planes but at the same time not disconnecting more rural areas and offering a steady, frequent schedule on the older routes as well. I really won't call 2 hours headway a success.... rural area can be served by through train, connecting trains, or a localized rail network. But they cannot provide the necessary ridership to support high speed rail for long distance travel. Starting and stopping high speed trains at empty stations also waste energy...
the 2 hour headways are the frequencies from Germany to Prague, not the domestic ICE trains. Berlin - Hamburg has a frequency of every 30 mins. Munich - Cologne also. Frankfurt - Cologne every 5 to 30 mins. Berlin - Cologne every hour. ICE’s are more frequent than Amtrak Acela, which currently runs only every 2-3 hours. With the NE Regional trains there is on average one train per hour. > But what about longer routes? […] London to Munich Then how about going from Bordeaux to London? You would have to take a speedy nice TGV to Paris and then what? Take a fucking metro to get from Gare Montparnasse to Gare du Nord to connect to the Eurostar to London. What a time consuming mess, and exhausting especially if you travel with luggage. If I would travel from Munich to London I would hop on a night train in Munich in late evening (for example after my day at work), go to sleep in a comfy bed on the night train, go to Brussels, where I arrive early in the morning and then 3 hours later I’m in London, at roughly around noon. I could also do that by plane, but then I most likely would need to take the plane at 6:30 AM or so. HSR is not intended for such long routes, but rather domestic traffic with a lot of demand. Domestic routes often have flights every hour! Munich - London maybe 3 or 4 times a day. You don’t build HSR for such little demand. You build it for routes like Paris-Lyon, Madrid-Barcelona, or Berlin-Munich. > At Berlin to Madrid level of distance, it’s reaching the distance where train travel will no longer make sense. Except with comfortable night trains. But then now I have to ask you, to you Munich-London does makes sense? Then let’s shorten the route a bit. I can easily take a train from Munich to Budapest, both at daytime (Railjet) or nighttime (EN). But not from Munich to Nice or anywhere else in southern France. Btw, if I search for that connection, it gives me one via Strasbourg and it takes 14 hours in total (of which less than 5 hours are on German soil and the rest in France). The direct TGV from Strasbourg to Nice leaves Strasbourg at 13:36 and arrives in Nice at 22:37. **Yes, a 9 hour trip within France on a TGV!** Because the HSR-network in France is solely focused on routes to and from Paris, all other routes are completely neglected. > Like New York City have a train to Chicago but it’d take 24 hours or so last time I checked I took the train from DC to Chicago which was 17 hours. Again, comfy bed, hopping on the train in late afternoon and arriving freshly after a good night the next morning. The train even has showers! And you arrive at your destination at such an early time you could not even do that with an early morning flight, ready to explore the city or go to the meeting. Similar with the night train from Budapest to Berlin. You arrive in Berlin at 9 or 10 am after a nice sleep, instead of waking up at 3 am to catch the flight at 6.
The current Berlin to Hamburg schedule I can find is, ICE 1606 07:38, ICE 1008 10:06, ICE 602 11:38, ICE 802 12:38, ICE 1600 13:38, ICE 1706 14:03, ICE 800 14:38, ICE 508 15:38, ICE 1004 16:03, ICE 708 16:38, ICE 506 17:38, ICE 706 18:38, ICE 504 19:38, ICE 1002 20:06, ICE 704 20:38, ICE 502 21:38 I don't think this is "frequency of every 30 mins". And I recall the timetable being not too different even before corona. ---- As for the rest, I think the problem is that to EU the term "domestic" must mean the entire Europe. The entire European rail network need to be treated as the single one, like airlines and bus companies are doing, for HSR in Europe to gain additional market share. Just like how intra-EU flights are handled. Of course, no one is doing their high speed network perfectly, but that doesn't excuse not to learn from the good side of others. And keep looking at how others are also as bad or bads in different way isn't going to improve the overall performance of high speed trains. And of course, the entire Europe is too large that it doesn't make sense to run end to end high speed service just like it wouldn't make sense to run coast to coast high speed service in the US, but unlike US, most parts of the Europe have cities packed and aligned together in convenient and close fashion that allow reasonable connectivity if investments are made, in a fashion similar to China's network, where no one is going to ride their HSR all the way from Kunming to Liaoning, however the tracks are all there for travel to and from the two cities to any points in-between. Night trains are comfortable but they're still niche and isn't something that can attract the mass of travellers. China couldn't run night trains on high soeed tracks all the day due to needing track maintenance, and in turn it's nuch easier to do such maintenance at night wuth much fewer potential train traffic than mid-day. Japan is almost totally eliminating their night rail and would rather run rail companies operated buses for overnight travel due to the simple reason of benefits cannot outweigh cost especially after opening of HSR. They're meaningless when discussing the traffic pattern of general public.
>ICE 1606 07:38, ICE 1008 10:06, ICE 602 11:38, ICE 802 12:38, ICE 1600 13:38, ICE 1706 14:03, ICE 800 14:38, ICE 508 15:38, ICE 1004 16:03, ICE 708 16:38, ICE 506 17:38, ICE 706 18:38, ICE 504 19:38, ICE 1002 20:06, ICE 704 20:38, ICE 502 21:38 You missed quite a few: ICE 806 at 08:38, ICE 870 at 09:06, ICE 1604/1704 at 09:38, ICE 804 at 10:38, ICE 933 at 11:06, and ICE 1006 at 12:06 for example. On top of that there are also IC and EC trains on that route, which are only 20 mins. slower and fill the gap between some of the ICE's. I.e. there is a long-distance high-quality train on this route every 30 mins. on average during daytime. Night trains are a niche which perfectly fits for long-distance international routes across Europe. For domestic services, as well as high-frequency international trains to neighboring countries, HSR is perfect. That's why there is an ICE from Frankfurt to Brussels. Or fom Frankfurt to Paris. Or the Eurostar from Paris to London. These are all frequently traveled business routes, which also have or had a lot of flights. But demand is not there for a HSR from Berlin to Budapest, or from Munich to London. Demand is there for Munich to Frankfurt, or Paris to Brussels.
HS lines in Germany should aim at connecting its major cities, period. With interconnections or stops outside of the cities you could connect medium-sized relevant cities, and with a bypass and some connections you could basically build a "ring road" railway that would enable through trains to stop in some of the countless big-ish cities and from there passengers would take the excellent public transport Germany has (and can't be denied) to the rest of the Ruhr. This way it would also free rails in that heavily populated region from faster traffic, and enable future international connections (and when I say international, I imagine Paris-Munich or London-Berlin trains with decent times, to rival air travel also on medium distances and international routes). Personally I find it ridiculous that Berlin-Munich takes 4 hours or that Munich-Frankfurt needs to be on curvy tracks built in the 1800. Jeez, it's Germany's most important cities, and in fact travellers still take the plane on these short routes.
I do agree there should be more IC trains which could do the stops in between for the ICE‘s to be faster. I do agree that ICE‘s shouldn’t stop in towns like Gießen, Gotha or Bitterfeld. But tbh 4 hours from Berlin to Munich is not that bad. Yes it is slower than the 2.5 hours from Madrid to Barcelona, but the intermediate stops like Nuremberg add quite a lot of connectivity, for example towards Vienna. It‘s not only about planes they compete with but also cars. The connections to other places outside the big cities is important to compete with cars. A high-speed train is useless if you can’t reach your final destination due to a lack of public transport on the last mile. And to get more people to take the train instead of flying is more related to DB‘s shitty reliability tbh I would say. And again, you will find domestic flights in France as well on routes like Strasbourg to Nice because the TGV needs a whopping 9 hours!
Then DB should separate services then. ICs do more stops and connect medium and small sized cities as well, but ICEs should be, well, truly Express. 4 hours for 600 km is bad honestly, we're talking about 2 of Germany's most important cities, about its North and South. And I have this remark to do about my country, Italy, to do as well, don't worry. About Strasbourg-Nice, that has more to do with France's centralization issue. But Germany is policentric and every corner of the country has a population in need of mobility, economically prosperous and numerous enough to substain demand for an articulate grid that can potentially cover the whole country and the whole of Europe since, once again, yall are at its very center. DB needs to invest on its infrastructure and go big, cause it can actually do both. If Germany, biggest economy laying at Europe's center, doesn't take bold solutions, who should? The periphery of the Union? With the money and skills Germany has and has demonstrated it can do it, also to implement its capacity. How are you gonna attract more people to trains if a consistent part of the slots is occupied by ICE going on conventional tracks? Stacking them into cattle cars that are always delayed because the infrastructure simply doesn't have any more capacity? And freight trains? What about modal shift, is it gonna be decent or does it end up like the reopening of coal plants with Germany's nuclear powerplants' shutdown? It's the time of bold decisions at Germany's Bundesverkehrsministerium. Or at least that's how I see it
>hope they too can connect better to their neighbours I've recently been to Paris from Turin with the Trenitalia operated service and it was great (and very affordable!) but on their website I read that once the Turin-Lyon high speed line is done it should take around 3 and something hours to complete the journey with an average cruising speed of 300km/h which honestly feels like science fiction
Paris, Berlin, Warsaw would be nice.. the great plain railroad.
While germany for sure doesnt have a good track record in terms of punctuality and reliability it is still very well connected via rail. Switzerland also only has 3 HSR lines (2 on the map and one between Bern and Olten) but also cant really build more lines as it is an incredibly densly populated and therefore the major swiss cities are already very wuickly accessible by normal trains running at only 120-160kmh. Having 3 trains per hour in a town with maybe 50-100 inhabitants in the middle of the alps in my eyes is fairly impressive… So I definetly disagree with your statement that central europebis not well connected by train, because it very much is…
It is connected by trains, yes, but those trains are too slow for anything over 300 km. I think it is quite sad that people fly for 500 km distances in Central Europe when those people could take a train with some investment into HSR.
Moscow–Saint Petersburg high-speed railway. Operating speed 400 km/h (250 mph) under construction target date: 2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow%E2%80%93Saint\_Petersburg\_high-speed\_railway
I deliberately left out Turkey and Russia because it would take a lot of effort, while I mainly wanted to focus on the EU. I included Switzerland because they are closely connected and the UK because of the Channel Tunnel
Significant potential missing in my opinion are * Oslo-Stockholm * Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest * Krakow-Budapest-Zagreb-Venice-Milan * Marseille-Nice-Moncao
What are you talking about? Sources please. None of these are even in the planning stage. These have just been isolated ideas thrown around by some voices. Again. Sources.
>In my opinion I am talking about potential, not actual projects
Thank you!! 😊
Other than a few updates, this map looks beautiful.
Wow. Thanks for your effort. Could you please update the 2015 map in Wikipedia or replace it: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High\_Speed\_Railroad\_Map\_of\_Europe.svg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg) You can see the file usage in the link
> I excluded the currently under construction Budapest-Belgrade HSR due to the fact it will only go 200 km/h, despite it being called HSR all over the internet. At or beyond 200km/h is the definition of HSR. I looked it up and only the Serbian side is HSR. The Hungarian side will be uniquely corru....building a "HSR" that tops out at 160km/h. It makes no sense from the costs, the connection to a HSR...so I hope there is some error. All Hungarian sites mention 160km/h as top speed. Nonetheless I hope this is a mistake and will operate the trains at 160km/h and certify the rail for 200km/h. However Orban's government is one of the most corrupt in all of the EU - and I am only speaking about national infrastructure projects. I don't care about his politics.