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Four European railways currently have high-speed trains. Perhaps the
best known is French Railways’ TGV (train a grande vitesse), which holds
the world speed record of 515 kilometres per hour. But Germany, Italy and
Spain also have trains that are capable of exceeding 250 kilometres per
hour (the threshold that defines high speed). Now new plans propose a network
not only linking countries in the European Community but extending across
Eastern Europe too.

The plans were unveiled last month in Brussels at a conference on high-speed
trains hosted by the Union Internationale des Chemins de fer and the Community
of European Railways (a grouping that includes the 12 Community railways
plus Austria and Switzerland). They expand on those of December 1990, which
have already received the blessing of the Community’s transport ministers.

The scope of the vision is breathtaking. According to Andres Lopez,
professor of engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, twice
as many miles of new railways are being planned as miles of motorway. The
blueprint envisages the network of high-speed lines growing from a few
hundred kilometres to 3000 kilometres by 1996 and 7400 kilometres by the
end of the century. It sees the network extending eventually to 20 000 kilometres
with a further 15 000 kilometres of existing lines being substantially rebuilt
for high speeds at a cost of 180 billion Ecu (about £125 billion)

ENTHUSIASM TO TEMPER

The enthusiasm at the meeting was infectious. Evguenij Sotnikov, head
of Russia’s high-speed railway team, spoke of plans to link Moscow with
St Petersburg in just three hours. Gil Carmichael, the federal railroad
administrator in the US, talked of ‘a global intermodal network’ involving
all forms of transport of which a sizeable chunk would be the railways.

However, there is bound to be a gap between vision and reality. Some
of the new lines face considerable engineering challenges and all the projects
could suffer from a lack of cash. It is difficult to imagine many of the
Eastern European countries, in the throes of reconstruction and political
turmoil, finding cash for high-speed railways in the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, it is a remarkable change of fortune for a form of transport
that, not so long ago, was seen as ‘yesterday’s technology’. John Prideaux,
head of the British Rail team planning the link between London and the Channel
Tunnel, pointed out that in the 1960s BR was seriously considering closing
the main line between London and Edinburgh. Investment in European railways
fell to an all-time low in the 1970s.

The main lines that currently serve Europe are largely a product of
the last century. The railways have been in decline for most of this century.
From the 1920s onwards, motor vehicles began pilfering the short-distance
traffic. In the 1960s the aeroplane snatched long-distance travellers and
motorways squeezed the railways still further.

Japan led the way forward when it opened a new high-speed line in 1964.
The ‘bullet’ trains between Tokyo and Osaka were the first in the world
to average more than 160 kilometres per hour. Europe followed suit. The
French high-speed line between Paris and Lyon, the TGV Sud-Est, which opened
in two stages in 1981 and 1983, halved journey times. A non-stop train now
takes two hours and the number of passengers travelling by train between
the two cities has trebled. The Italian Railways opened its high-speed line,
between Florence and Rome, during the 1980s.

Progress has been slower, and more costly, in Germany where German Railways
has been planning high-speed lines since 1970. Environmental opposition
delayed procedures for acquiring land, which forced the authority to put
large stretches of new line into tunnels. This in turn caused another problem.
Entering a tunnel at high speed creates pressure pulses that cause passengers’
ears to pop unpleasantly. As a result Germany’s intercity trains are sealed
and pressurised like aircraft to insulate passengers from the changes in
pressure outside.

Nevertheless, in the 1990s the pace of opening has already begun to
accelerate. Last year Germany opened its first two high-speed lines and
France opened its second TGV line, the Atlantique. Last month, Spanish Railways
became the fourth railway to join the 250 kilometres per hour club when
it opened a new line from Madrid to Seville. The alta velocidad espanola,
or AVE, is essentially imported TGV technology.

The AVE also marks the resolution of one of the technical differences
between the railways. Most European trains run on standard gauge, with rails
1435 millimetres apart – but the gauge in Spain was wider, 1676 millimetres.
Spanish Railways has now decided that the AVE, and all future high-speed
trains, will run on standard gauge.

Over the next four years a further six stretches of high-speed line
will open: three in France and one each in Austria, Belgium and Germany.
Britain will finally be linked to this growing network when trains begin
to run through the Channel Tunnel from London to Brussels and Paris, although
delays in delivering the rolling stock make this unlikely until early in
1994.

The TGV Nord will link Paris to the Channel Tunnel. It should be ready
to open next year. But the connection to Brussels is unlikely to open until
1996 and uncertainty surrounds the opening date of the British high-speed
line to London.

One of Britain’s geographical curiosities is that trains travel twice
as fast when leaving London for the north of the country than they do when
heading south, because the lines to the north have been modernised. So for
about six years after the Channel Tunnel opens the first truly international
high-speed service will see a TGV leaving Paris at 300 kilometres per hour,
slowing to 160 kilometres per hour through the tunnel and then crawling
to London at an average speed during the rush hour that is straight out
of the steam age, 80 kilometres per hour. British Rail had been planning
a route into London from the south but last year the government, partly
in response to environmental opposition and partly because of the fact that
several marginal constituencies lay on the proposed southerly route, opted
for a different route – one that approaches London from the east.

The decision has set the planning of the link back by years. The most
likely timetable is that British Rail will now send its revised proposals
to the government by the end of this year and seek Parliament’s approval
to build the line next year. If all goes according to plan, construction
of the line will start in 1995 and the railway could be finished by the
end of the century. It should shave just half an hour off the journey from
London to Paris.

The international plans focus on filling in ‘key links’ such as this.
Another key link runs from Scandinavia to the European mainland. Denmark
is already building a road and rail link across the Great Belt to link the
mainland of Jutland to the island of Zeeland in 1995. The Swedish and Danish
governments agreed last year to build a road and rail link between Copenhagen
and Malmo, which could be completed by 1999. The German and Danish ministries
of transport last year started to study a more direct link between Zeeland
and the German mainland across the Femer Belt, north of Hamburg.

Another of the missing links would provide a quicker connection between
Lyon and Milan, under the Alps. This envisages building a tunnel, 54 kilometres
long, through the rock at the base of the Alps. It would create the world’s
longest tunnel.

Although the new railways are certain to win passengers back from the
air, the airlines may even give the plans a cautious welcome. More than
30 of Europe’s major airports are expected to be at full capacity by the
end of the century. If the railways took over from short haul flights, they
would create capacity for the airlines to concentrate on long haul flights.

ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS

If there is a boom in building new lines, the environmental arguments
against high-speed trains are certain to grow stronger. Railways have been
largely marginalised in environmental discussions about transport. This
is partly because trains generally cause less disturbance to the environment
than either planes or cars and partly because there has been little new
railway building to provide a focus for environmental objections. The French
Railways’ plan to extend the TGV line south through Provence has run into
stiff opposition, however.

Europe’s railways argue that they use land efficiently: a two-track
railway has the same capacity as a six-lane motorway. The railways are also
efficient users of energy and, consequently, are not major producers of
the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. A passenger travelling by car or by
air consumes about 2 megajoules of energy for every kilometre: a passenger
travelling on a TGV consumes half as much energy. German Railways estimate
that one of its new lines, by persuading drivers to leave their cars at
home, will cut pollution on the route by 15 per cent. Railways are also
a safe form of transport, compared with the daily carnage on Europe’s roads.
In Britain, for instance, 14 people a day died in road accidents last year,
while a total of 4 passengers died in railway accidents over the past two
years.

Another defect in the pan-European vision is the lack of a truly European
train. Channel Tunnel trains will scarcely fit the bill – they incorporate
fire safety features needed for running through the tunnel, which makes
them expensive to buy for use on other routes. The axle weight of the German
intercity train is too heavy for French rails, while the Italian ETR 500
is a relative latecomer. The TGV comes the closest. France is already involved
in no less than five of the international high-speed lines and is set to
become the hub of the network. One straw in the wind is the announcement
by French Railways that all future TGV designs will be pressure-sealed and
thus will be able to run in Germany. Or as the French president Francois
Mitterrand put it: ‘Le TGV, une facon de faire l’Europe.’