Rail transport in Europe has diverse technological standards, operating concepts, and infrastructures. Common features are the widespread use of standard-gauge rail, high operational safety and a high share of electrification. Electrified railway networks operate at many different voltages, both AC and DC, varying from 750 to 25,000 volts, and signaling systems vary from country to country, complicating cross-border traffic.
The European Union aims to make cross-border operations easier as well as to introduce competition to national rail networks. EU member states were empowered to separate the provision of transport services and the management of the infrastructure by the Single European Railway Directive 2012. Usually, national railway companies were split into separate divisions or independent companies for infrastructure, passenger and freight operations. The passenger operations may be further divided into long-distance and regional services, because regional services often operate under public service obligations (which maintain services which are not economically interesting to private companies but nonetheless produce societal benefit), while long-distance services usually operate without subsidies.
Across the European Union, passenger rail transport saw a 50% increase between 2021 and 2022, as COVID subsided, and reached 245 billion traveled miles. The trend is expected to continue and rapid investments in European Union railways are under way. [2]
Europe was the epicenter of rail transport and has today one of the densest networks. Interoperability and high speed rail in Europe are current issues.
Overall only about 18% of European cargo moves by railway; in some countries, such as France, the percentage is much lower, but it is much higher in other countries, including Lithuania where over 70% of domestic cargo is transported by train. [3] The relative weakness of rail freight is due to the lower price of truck transport which externalizes a larger share of costs than rail, [4] [5] [6] as well as the high usage of coastal and inland shipping. By way of comparison, in the U.S., 38% of cargo (by ton-kilometer) moved via rail in 2000, primarily due to external factors such as geography. [7] Similarly Swiss railroads carry about 40% (by ton kilometres) of Swiss domestic freight [8] and even more than 70% of the (mostly international) freight traffic across the Swiss Alps: 74.4% in the first half of 2021. [9] [10] The new railway link through the Alps includes the Gotthard Base tunnel, one of the longest tunnels in the world, and was built specifically to shift freight traffic across the Alps from road to rail. [11] [12]
A big problem for long-distance international freight services – despite the European Single Market allowing freedom of movement of goods, capital, labor and people and the Schengen area drastically reducing internal border controls – is the variety of differing standards for electrification, loading gauge, signaling, driver certificates and even gauge. Finland (Russian gauge), Portugal and Spain (Iberian gauge) use their own broad gauges, as do the Baltic States and several non-EU members (mostly Russian gauge). Rail Baltica is an EU-funded project to provide a standard gauge rail link in and through the Baltic countries, potentially connecting to a Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel. While attempts to unify the divergent standards date back to at least the 1880s with the Conférence internationale pour l'unité technique des chemins de fer (international conference for the technical unity of railroads) in Bern, Switzerland, setting minimum standards for loading gauges (the so-called Berne gauge) and the so-called "Berne space" (the space reserved for railroad workers in buffer and chain couplers [13] ), most standards still differ widely between and even within countries as many rules only apply to newly-built infrastructure, as much of Europe's rail infrastructure was built in the 19th century, and upgrading it would be costly and disruptive.
Another problem is that unlike aviation, where Aviation English is a de facto global standard with few non-English holdouts, rail operations virtually always use the local language, requiring train operators either to be polyglots [14] or necessitating a change of staff at every (language) border. Another impediment to freight rail in Europe is the coupling system commonly used. While the Scharfenberg coupler, a mostly automatic system, is now commonly used on passenger trains, [15] its relatively low limit on the maximum tonnage it can pull makes it unsuitable for most freight operations. While American freight railroads largely use Janney couplers, European freight trains primarily still use buffer and chain couplers, which require railway workers to screw each connection open and shut again during shunting, reducing speed and efficiency and increasing labor cost, [16] though unlike Janney couplers they allow for workers to adjust the slack between railcars. [17] There are plans to replace these couplers with a new digital automatic coupling system, but those have taken longer than expected and are still far from completion. [18] [19] A pilot project regarding the digital automatic coupling system was launched by the German Federal Ministry of Transportation in 2020 and is to last until 2022.[ needs update ] [20] [21]
Train lengths in Europe are limited by the size of passing loops and refuge sidings as well as the placement of signals. [22] [23] There are plans to allow trains up to 740–750 meters long to use the main freight lines by upgrading the requisite infrastructure; [24] [25] various construction projects to that end have already been completed. [26] [27] 750 meters is still much shorter than the longest trains worldwide; however most European rail infrastructure is not built to allow for longer trains without severe disruption. In addition, longer trains are considered to be more dangerous, as they provide more opportunities for freight cars to derail and make brake applications slower. Therefore, shorter freight trains may be an advantage rather than a disadvantage if safety is the priority. [28]
Double stack rail transport, where two intermodal containers are stacked on top of another, either on flatcars or specifically designed well cars, is virtually unheard of in Europe as the loading gauge of most lines does not allow it. While the Betuweroute in the Netherlands was built with height clearances allowing double stacking, [29] it does not (as of 2021) connect to any rail line that allows double stacking, and no double stack container trains have ever run along it.
Unlike countries like United States, where mainline freight rail electrification is nonexistent, a large percentage of European freight trains are electrified. [ citation needed ]
The 2017 European Railway Performance Index ranked the performance of national rail systems as follows: [30]
While most railways in Europe use 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge —in some other countries, like on the Iberian Peninsula, or countries which territories used to be a part of Russian Empire and Soviet Union: widespread broad gauge exists. For instance Eastern European countries like Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova, Belarus, Finland, and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) use a gauge width of 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) or 1,524 mm (5 ft) (also known as Russian gauge). In Spain and Portugal 1,668 mm (5 ft 5+21⁄32 in) (also known as Iberian gauge) is used. Ireland uses the somewhat unusual 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) gauge, referred to in Ireland as "Irish Gauge" (but is an island with no external cross-border links).
Likewise, electrification of lines varies between countries. 15 kV AC has been used in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden since 1912, while the Netherlands and France use 1500 V DC. France and Croatia also use 25 kV AC, Belgium, Italy and Slovenia use 3 kV DC. All this makes the construction of truly pan-European vehicles a challenging task and, until recent developments in locomotive construction, was mostly ruled out as being impractical and too expensive.
The development of an integrated European high-speed rail network is overcoming some of these differences. All high-speed lines outside of Russia, including those built in Spain and Portugal, use 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge tracks. Likewise all European high-speed lines, outside of Germany, Austria and Italy use 25 kV AC electrification (Electrification of high-speed rail in Italy is mixed 3 kV DC and 25 kV AC). This means that by 2020 high-speed trains can travel from Italy to the United Kingdom, or Portugal to the Netherlands without the need for multi-voltage systems or breaks of gauge — or they could, if they didn't have to commute from one high-speed line to the next over "classical" lines using a different voltage and/or frequency.
Multiple incompatible train protection systems are another barrier to interoperability. A unified system, ETCS is the EU's project to unify train protection across Europe. The specification was written in 1996 in response to EU Directive 96/48/EC. ETCS is developed as part of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) initiative, and is being tested by multiple Railway companies since 1999. All new high-speed lines and freight main lines funded partially by the EU are required to use ETCS Level 1 or Level 2.
The loading gauge on the main lines of Great Britain, almost all of which were built before 1900, is generally smaller than in mainland Europe, where the slightly larger Berne gauge (Gabarit passe-partout international, PPI) was agreed to in 1913 as a general minimum standard (individual lines can and do adhere to larger loading gauge standards) and came into force in 1914. [31] [32] As a result, British (passenger) trains have noticeably and considerably smaller loading gauges and smaller interiors, despite the track being standard gauge.
This results in increased costs for purchasing trains as they must be specifically designed for the British network, rather than being purchased "off-the-shelf". For example, the new trains for HS2 have a 50% premium applied to the "classic compatible" sets which will be able to run on the rest of the network, meaning they will cost £40 million each rather than £27 million for the captive stock (built to European standards and unable to run on other lines), despite the captive stock being larger. [33] Similarly prior to the construction of High Speed 1 (then also known as the "Channel Tunnel Rail Link") to continental European standards, the first generation Eurostar trains were required to have several custom modifications compared to the TGV trains they are based on, including narrower loading gauge and provision for third rail electrification as used in southeast England. The successor Eurostar e320 is an almost "off the shelf" Siemens Velaro and is thus incompatible with most of the British legacy rail network but can run on most of Europe's high speed rail network.
The European Union Commission issued a TSI (Technical Specifications for Interoperability) that sets out standard platform heights for passenger steps on high-speed rail. These standard heights are 550 and 760 mm (21.7 and 29.9 in). As the map indicates, there are several areas where 550 mm and 760 mm platform heights overlap and many trains serve stations with platforms of both heights posing challenges for step-free access. Where trains optimized for 760 mm platforms have to serve 550 mm platforms (or vice versa) accessibility is often limited. [34] [35] [36] Due to path dependency a mixture of platform heights will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
The main international trains operating in Europe are:
Additionally, there are a lot of cross-border trains at the local level. Some local lines, like the Gronau to Enschede line between Germany and the Netherlands, operate on the signaling system of the country the line originates from, with no connection to the other country's network, whilst other train services like the Saarbahn between Germany and France use specially equipped vehicles that have a certificate to run on both networks. When there is an electrification difference between two countries, border stations with switchable overhead lines can be used. Venlo railway station in the Netherlands is one such example, the overhead on the tracks can be switched between the Dutch 1500 V DC and the German 15 kV AC, which means a change of traction (or reconfiguring a multiple-voltage vehicle) is necessary at the station. On the other hand, an increasing number of locomotives can change voltages "on the fly" without stopping, usually with temporarily lowered pantographs, for instance on the viaduct of Moresnet where freight trains change voltages between Belgian 3 kV DC and German 15 kV 16.7 Hz. A third possibility concerns networks using voltages of the same order of magnitude, such as Belgium (3 kV DC) and the Netherlands (1.5 kV DC): Belgian trains to Maastricht or Roosendaal (Dutch stations located near the border) can use the lower Dutch voltage, albeit with reduced power, on the short stretch from the border to their Dutch terminal station and back. Increasingly the European Union mandates unified standards (see below) for newly built high speed lines to allow smoother international passenger services.
EU rail subsidies amounted to €73 billion in 2005. [38] Subsidies vary widely from country to country in both size and how they are distributed, with some countries giving direct grants to the infrastructure provider and some giving subsidies to train operating companies, often through public service obligations. In general long-distance trains are not subsidized.
The 2017 European Railway Performance Index found a positive correlation between public cost and a given railway system's performance and differences in the value that countries receive in return for their public cost. The 2015 and 2017 performance reports found a strong relationship between cost efficiency and the share of subsidies allocated to infrastructure managers. A transparent subsidy structure, in which public subsidies are provided directly to the infrastructure manager rather than spread among multiple train-operating companies, correlates with a higher-performing railway system. [30]
The 2017 Index found Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland capture relatively high value for their money, while Luxembourg, Belgium, Latvia, Slovakia, Portugal, Romania, and Bulgaria underperform relative to the average ratio of performance to cost among European countries. [30]
Country | Subsidy (€ billions) | Year |
---|---|---|
![]() | 17.0 | 2014 [39] |
![]() | 13.2 | 2013 [40] |
![]() | 7.6 | 2012 [41] |
![]() | 5.1 | 2015 [42] |
![]() | 9.2 | 2016 [43] |
![]() | 4.3 | 2012 [44] |
![]() | 2.8 | 2012 [45] |
![]() | 2.5 | 2014 [46] |
![]() | 2.3 | 2009 [47] |
![]() | 1.7 | 2008 [48] |
![]() | 1.6 | 2009 [49] |
![]() | 1.4 | 2008 [48] |
![]() | 0.91 | 2008 [48] |
Fourth Railway Package attempts liberalization of domestic passenger services in an attempt to reduce European rail subsidies.
As mentioned above, historically rules and standards on European railroads varied widely and thus the European Union has tried to harmonize and standardize those towards a single common European set of rules. The advent of High Speed Rail added to the "classical" problems of railway electrification standards, gauge, loading gauge and "classical" signaling the additional problem of train protection systems, which are necessary for any train exceeding the speed limit of legacy signaling (79 mph in the United States, 160 km/h (99 mph) in much of continental Europe and 125 mph in Great Britain). Virtually every European country with significant high speed rail ambitions developed its own, incompatible, standard, be it German LZB, French TVM or Italian BACC. As there was resistance to choosing any of the pre-existing systems as a basis for a new European standard the European Train Control System or ETCS was developed and is now mandatory for newly built high speed lines receiving EU funding. [50] [51]
Rail transport is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport. It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed.
As of 2021, Germany had a railway network of 33,399 kilometres (20,753 mi), of which 20,540 kilometres (12,760 mi) were electrified and 18,556 kilometres (11,530 mi) were double track. Germany is a member of the International Union of Railways (UIC). The UIC Country Code for Germany is 80.
The Swiss rail network is noteworthy for its density, its coordination between services, its integration with other modes of transport, timeliness and a thriving domestic and trans-Alp freight system. It is made necessary by strong regulations on truck transport, and is enabled by properly coordinated intermodal logistics.
An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or gas turbines, are classed as diesel–electric or gas turbine–electric and not as electric locomotives, because the electric generator/motor combination serves only as a power transmission system.
The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. The term "interurban" is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in many parts of the world before the Second World War and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution, when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
A loading gauge is a diagram or physical structure that defines the maximum height and width dimensions in railway vehicles and their loads. Their purpose is to ensure that rail vehicles can pass safely through tunnels and under bridges, and keep clear of platforms, trackside buildings and structures. Classification systems vary between different countries, and gauges may vary across a network, even if the track gauge is uniform.
Railway electrification is the use of electric power for the propulsion of rail transport. Electric railways use either electric locomotives, electric multiple units or both. Electricity is typically generated in large and relatively efficient generating stations, transmitted to the railway network and distributed to the trains. Some electric railways have their own dedicated generating stations and transmission lines, but most purchase power from an electric utility. The railway usually provides its own distribution lines, switches, and transformers.
Belgium has an extensive rail network. It is a member of the International Union of Railways (UIC). The UIC Country Code for Belgium is 88.
Railway electrification systems using alternating current (AC) at 25 kilovolts (kV) are used worldwide, especially for high-speed rail. It is usually supplied at the standard utility frequency, which simplifies traction substations. The development of 25 kV AC electrification is closely connected with that of successfully using utility frequency.
Hungarian State Railways is the Hungarian national railway company and railway infrastructure manager, with subsidiaries "MÁV START Zrt.", and "Utasellátó". The head office is in Budapest.
The Finnish railway network consists of a total track length of 9,216 km (5,727 mi). The railways are built with a broad 1,524 mm track gauge, of which 3,249 km (2,019 mi) is electrified. Passenger trains are operated by the state-owned enterprise VR that runs services on 7,225 km (4,489 mi) of track. These services cover all major cities and many rural areas, though the coverage is less than the coverage provided by the bus services. Most passenger train services originate or terminate at Helsinki Central railway station, and a large proportion of the passenger rail network radiates out of Helsinki. VR also operates freight services. Maintenance and construction of the railway network itself is the responsibility of the Finnish Rail Administration, which is a part of the Finnish Transport Agency. The network consists of six areal centres, that manage the use and maintenance of the routes in co-operation. Cargo yards and large stations may have their own signalling systems.
Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
Rail transport in South Africa is an important element of the country's transport infrastructure. All major cities are connected by rail, and South Africa's railway system is the most highly developed in Africa. The South African rail industry is publicly owned.
Rail transport in the Netherlands uses a dense railway network which connects nearly all major towns and cities. There are as many train stations as there are municipalities in the Netherlands. The network totals 3,223 route km (2,003 mi) on 6,830 kilometres (4,240 mi) of track; a line may run both ways, or two lines may run on major routes. Three-quarters of the lines have been electrified.
Rail transport in France is marked by a clear predominance of passenger traffic, driven in particular by high-speed rail. The SNCF, the national state-owned railway company, operates most of the passenger and freight services on the national network managed by its subsidiary SNCF Réseau. France currently operates the second-largest European railway network, with a total of 29,901 kilometres of railway.
Turkey has a state-owned railway system built to standard gauge which falls under the remit of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. The primary rail carrier is the Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Demiryolları (TCDD) which is responsible for all long-distance and cross-border freight and passenger trains. A number of other companies operate suburban passenger trains in urban conurbations.
Rail transport in Lithuania consists of freight shipments and passenger services. The construction of the first railway line in Lithuania began in 1859. As of 2021, the total length of railways in Lithuania was 1,868.8 km (1,161.2 mi). Lietuvos Geležinkeliai, the national state-owned railway company, operates most of the passenger and freight services.
The Polish railways network consists of around 18,510 kilometres (11,500 mi) of track as of 2019, of which 11,998 km (7,455 mi) is electrified. The national electrification system runs at 3 kV DC.
High-speed rail (HSR) has developed in Europe as an increasingly popular and efficient means of transport. The first high-speed rail lines on the continent, built in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, improved travel times on intra-national corridors.
Many countries offer subsidies to their railways because of the social and economic benefits that it brings. The economic benefits can greatly assist in funding the rail network. Those countries usually also fund or subsidize road construction, and therefore effectively also subsidize road transport. Rail subsidies vary in both size and how they are distributed, with some countries funding the infrastructure and others funding trains and their operators, while others have a mixture of both. Subsidies can be used for either investment in upgrades and new lines, or to keep lines running that create economic growth.
C'est, d'ailleurs, partant du constat que la part de marché du fret ferroviaire en France n'a cessé de s'éroder au profit du transport routier de marchandises, pour tomber à 9 %, soit cinq fois moins qu'en 1974 et environ la moitié de la moyenne européenne
2008 data is not provided for Italy, so 2007 data is used instead
£6.7 billion, consisting of £4.3billion to network rail, and £2.4billion to train operating companies (TOC) using average of £1=1.366 euros for 2015-16
4.7 billion Swiss francs
2008 data is not provided for Italy, so 2007 data is used instead
Includes both "Railway subsidies" and "Public Service Obligations".