Traveling short, local trips via public transport most places in Europe is getting very economical, while I feel traveling distances outside those local zones is getting prohibitively expensive compared to air travel. I used to be able to get from my home in western France to Amsterdam via trains for much less than flying or driving, whereas last fall I priced train tickets and it was going to run me over 350€ round trip. I could fly for less. Except I don't live near a major airport and thus no direct flying. Its getting to the point where for long trips I could drive for much less than the train (especially if I go longer routes and avoid some tolls) which I feel is the exact opposite of what needs to be promoted. I wish there was more high speed, affordable long distance train travel so I could avoid flying all the time. But it is only getting significantly more expensive.
My cheapest ever flight was either £9.99 (or €9.99?) for a one way from Berlin to London Gatwick, the train onward from Gatwick to Havant cost twice that.
I've also had round-trip air tickets on the same route for about 300.
Also, at the start of December I had a week long trip to the UK, and my flight back from Stansted was cancelled while I was on the runway and the first replacement flight Ryanair's website listed was a week later, so (after further nonsense I will not repeat here) I took the train to Portsmouth, the ferry to Cean, and then a train to Berlin. The combined cost of all of those and the hotel in Cean was about a third the cost of any earlier direct flight from any airline listed on Skyscanner.
Its sad really, each country and the EU itself all have the totally wrong approach to high speed rail.
The EU seems hell bent on turning Europe in England for some reason.
France and Spain believes that High-Speed rail is basically an airline. They miss basic stuff like one line should connect to the other, and are bad in terms of connecting high speed rail the rest of the infrastructure.
German has political problem building out a rational designed overall network and is vastly under-funding lots of rail infrastructure projects that are total non-brainers. But because its all politics with little planning.
I am extremely pissed that Switzerland build a huge tunnel threw a mountain, only for Italy and Germany to basically do nothing. Everybody expected Italy to be behind, but Germany is still not done its part.
Switzerland on the other hand basically doesn't believe in high speed rail at all and that is kind of a problem if we ever want a real European high speed network that doesn't suck. Thankful some people are pushing for such a line. We basically need a line Genf-St.Gallen, and Basel to Lugano. And then connect those to the high speed lines of the nations around us.
Britain in the meanwhile is actually building high speed rail, but constantly trying to cut it down, and at the same time they are not connecting their net with Europe because of stupid immigration policies.
Belgium has the slowest high speed rail ever.
Netherlands and Germany can't seem to figure out basic East-West connections.
We have long way to go in Europe to actual get high speed rail correct.
It would be great to have real high speed trains in Switzerland. Unfortunately it's just not possible though. A train can only go very fast if the tracks are very long and straight. In switzerland there just is no space for that. The non mountainous parts of the country are densely populated. Even if you have tracks where you could go very fast such as the Gotthard tunnel it's not worth it to buy trains that go that fast for the very few passages that actually allow them to make full use of their speed. Besides if not all trains on the network can go this fast you need to increase the interval between trains which you obviously don't want to.
Sorry, but hard disagree. For the main route that goes threw the population, from Genf to St.Gallen, you can absolutely make a new high speed rail line.
Doing such a high speed lane would open up massive amount of capacity. More local trains, more regional trains and importantly more cargo trains.
Switzerland has a modal share of over 20% for rail, and if we want to boost that to 40%, then new high speed rail is a must.
> The non mountainous parts of the country are densely populated.
Switzerland is not even close to as populated as Southern England, and somehow they are building high speed rail. And the British aren't exactly known to be great infrastructure builders.
> Besides if not all trains on the network can go this fast you need to increase the interval between trains which you obviously don't want to.
You would use special high speed trains on the new high speed lines and use all the other trains on the other lanes. Just as they will do on HS2.
