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The rail revolution
January 2008
Joseph Baron, International Trade Today
By all accounts, Europe is going into a high-speed rail frenzy, with new routes being built at exponential rates to the extent that they are set to triple in the next 13 years to 150,000km of track. The big news is that last year French and German rail operators SNCF and DB launched a new service providing significantly reduced times between France, Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
On the new Paris-Strasbourg TGV East line, TGV trains are reaching speeds of 320km/h, an increase of 20km/h on the previous average. And the new route will translate – according to TGV-East director Alain Le Guellec – to a growth of passenger traffic in the order of 65 per cent by 2011. (Air France is said to be currently assessing the potential impact on its eastern business).
In a nutshell, it is now possible to catch a train from Paris to Stuttgart (3h40m), Munich (6h15m), Frankfurt (3h50m), Luxembourg (2h5m), Basel (3h30m) and Zurich (4h35mm).
And the prices aren’t bad either. I searched for a return journey from Paris to Stuttgart (outward bound October 15, return 16), and found the cheapest ticket cost 86.50 euros. The only annoyance during the booking process on the SNCF website was the pre-ticked insurance box – a trick one suspects has been ‘learned’ from some of its budget airline cousins.
The €4bn project has entailed the building of 338 bridges, viaducts and tunnels, the removing of 64m cubic metres of earth, and the use of 78,000 tonnes of steel for the rails – the equivalent of eight Eiffel towers.
Cross country co-operation - a major hurdle in this type of enterprise – seems to have been overcome with the creation of Railteam. Formed by the European high speed train operators Deutsche Bahn, SNCF, SNCB, NS Hispeed, OBB, SBB and Eurostar UK, Railteam offers seamless high-speed journeys across borders. The group says that it wants to ‘change the perception that international cross-border travel by rail is difficult’.
Railteam wants passengers to arrive at their destination refreshed and relaxed, and it plans to do this via a number of initiatives. First, it has opened multi-lingual information points in Brussels, Cologne, Lille, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, with more kiosks planned in London, Paris, Strasbourg and Amsterdam. Secondly, passengers who miss a train – for whatever reason – will be allowed to board the next available train, irrespective of the type of ticket they have. Budget airlines take note!
Also, a €30m interconnected system is being installed to allow travellers to book the best prices and receive a ticket from any distributor of European rail in a single transaction (expected to go live 2009).
Business travellers who embrace this new age of high-speed rail will receive a number of benefits, including a frequent traveller ‘train mile’ programme, access to 36 business lounges and discounted car hire.
Last November Eurostar services switched from Waterloo to St Pancras, in a move expected to cut the time of the 2h 35m London-to-Paris journey by 20 minutes.
Other UK high-speed developments have been thin on the ground, apart from a number of announcements regarding feasibility studies of magnetic levitation trains similar to those used by the Shanghai Maglev Train, which opened in 2004 and makes the 30km journey from Shanghai to Pudong International Airport in seven minutes and 20 seconds.
Strathclyde Partnership for Transport commissioned one such study last June. It is looking into the possibility of a maglev link that would allow for speeds of 300mph, reducing journey times to an astonishing 15 minutes between Edinburgh and Glasgow. A similar project is also being investigated to connect Teesside with Tyneside.
More recently, the Mersey Partnership announced it was looking to secure funding for a study examining a 300mph Transrapid maglev route linking Liverpool and Manchester, which would provide a 10-15 minute link. ‘This feasibility study would look at engineering and technical issues, as well as examining methods of financing and procuring the project. It would also dovetail with work being conducted by UK Ultraspeed and their partners in other parts of Northern England and Scotland,’ said Dave Moorcroft, acting chief executive officer of the Mersey Partnership.
UK Ultraspeed – the organisation backing the take-up of maglev technology in the UK – has also welcomed a degree of endorsement for its technology from the Conservative Party’s Economic Competitiveness Policy Group, which states, ‘We have looked at high-speed train options for the UK, and have concluded that an incoming Conservative government should explore the feasibility and costs of implementing the new maglev technology, which offers the opportunity of far faster inter-city travel, and hence a more effective challenge to the aeroplane.
‘This should surely be preferred to spending further large sums of money on attempts to create a limited number of express facilities on our already congested and overburdened track at the expense of other rail services.’
Interestingly, the Government White Paper Delivering a Sustainable Railway, published at the end of last June, dismissed maglev technology as ‘too expensive to represent value of money’.
However, according to UK Ultraspeed, the White Paper ‘reached its conclusion on maglev on the basis of a massive error of fact. The cost of the system is overstated by a staggering £31bn, according to company chief executive officer Dr Alan James. ‘Major infrastructure projects demand robust numbers, not inaccurate cost figures tens of billions of pounds astray.’ On being informed of the error, said UK Ultraspeed, Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly accepted an invitation to meet Dr James and re-engage regarding maglev.
High-speed rail travel in the UK may yet turn out to be nothing but pie-in-the-sky. However, on the Continent it is a reality, giving UK international traders another solid travel option.
