Compartments instead of airlines, rails instead of roads: the renaissance of rail is Europe’s central response to climate and transport problems. Today, only around 7 per cent of European passengers and 11 per cent of goods travel by rail. The rest travel by car, truck or plane. This is set to change completely. The EU Commission wants to make short-haul flights redundant and instead expand high-speed trains and night trains across borders. High-speed transport is to double by 2030 and triple by 2050. The idea behind this is to to connect Europe’s major cities as if they were districts of a single mega-metropolis – a ‘European underground railway’, as the network called ‘Starline’ is also known, stretching across the continent. The idea comes from the Copenhagen-based think tank ‘21st Europe’.

The idea is not new. Plans for trans-European transport networks (TEN-T) have been around since the 1990s. These are intended to strengthen the internal market and promote environmentally friendly mobility. Nine major corridors – from Scandinavia to Sicily, from the Atlantic coast to the Black Sea – form the backbone of this pan-European network. The Main Line for Europe connects Paris with Budapest and Bratislava. The Brenner Base Tunnel shortens the journey time between Munich and Verona. And the Rail Baltica project will ensure that the Baltic states are better connected to the Central European rail network. The EU is pursuing several goals with this: climate protection through more trains on the rails, a strong EU internal market thanks to faster connections for people and goods, and, last but not least, a geopolitical signal of European autonomy – in competition with China’s new Silk Road, for example.

The Copenhagen-based think tank 21st Europe has now presented a plan for a transcontinental rail network. This is not only interesting, but also quite ambitious. The plan is to create a high-speed rail network across Europe that will function similarly to an underground or metro system. The ‘Starline’ project aims to reinvent the continent’s ‘fragmented, uneven and often slow’ railway infrastructure and introduce ultra-fast connections that can compete with air travel, according to the idea.

The Danish think tank has some interesting ideas in the pipeline, particularly when it comes to organisation, administration and financing: Starline is to be overseen by a new European Railway Agency (ERA) – an EU body responsible for the coordination, interoperability and long-term expansion of the European rail system. By embedding Starline in Europe’s institutional and legal framework, the network will become more than a transport system – it will become an integral part of the continent’s infrastructure strategy.

Starline is to be financed through a combination of EU infrastructure budgets, funds from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and long-term EU bonds. While EU funds will finance the rail network itself, national governments will co-finance their respective stations and regional connections. The private sector will be involved in the development of stations and logistics operations. Ticket prices are to be significantly cheaper than short-haul flights and current rail connections. This should encourage customers to switch to the rail network. Freight transport, on the other hand, will co-finance passenger transport via track access charges, thereby increasing the project’s profitability.

Source/Author: Sinde Metz: The European ‘Starline’ underground: Vision of a continental rail network and 21st Europe: Starline – 21st Europe