High~speed trains to connect all capitals and major cities in the EU

The European Commission will present a plan to improve high-speed rail connections in Europe in the coming months.

This was stated by the European Commissioner for Transport, Apostolos Dzidzicostas, in an interview with The Guardian.

The main goal of the plan is to make rail travel competitive with air travel in terms of convenience, speed and cost.

"Ultimately, people will choose to travel by train not only because it is more environmentally friendly, but also because it will be a more convenient, faster and more affordable option for long-distance travel in Europe. We are moving in this direction," the European Commissioner said.

According to the publication, the EU aims to double high-speed rail traffic by 2030 compared to 2015, and triple it by 2050.

The European Commission’s plan envisages the creation of a coordinated rail network with speeds of 250 km/h or more, connecting all capitals and major cities in the EU. According to Dzidzikostas, the new plan will achieve this goal by eliminating systemic bottlenecks. This will require opening up market access to new rail operators, standardizing rolling stock and transforming disparate national operators into a single system with similar rules and operating conditions.

The European Commissioner is confident that if rail becomes “a comfortable, accessible and easy-to-book service”, passengers will use it more actively.

“I am an optimist by nature and a fan of railways. I can already imagine the day when someone will have lunch in Vesterbro in Copenhagen and, after a train ride, will have dinner in Wenceslas Square next to Prague’s central station,” says the European Commissioner.

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