Europe’s 5,000km of high-speed railway track will swell by a factor of three by 2020, making it the most impressive cross-border railway system in the world. As early as 2010, it is expected to be carrying at least 25 million passengers a year.

With trains reaching speeds of up to 350km/h, the expanded network is expected to attract many passengers who would otherwise go by road or fly. In addition it is estimated that around 15% will be “induced traffic”, meaning people whose journey would not have been made in the absence of a high-speed service.

The EU has been an active participant in spurring the growth. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty opened borders to trade, facilitating the dream of a future, seamlessly integrated pan-European railway system. The first cross-border high-speed service was the Thalys, opened in 1997 between Paris/Brussels and Cologne, linking up with Eurostar, which had begun in 1994.

The final stretch of Thalys, to Amsterdam from Brussels via Rotterdam, will be completed next year, making it a competitive four-hour journey from London and reducing the Paris-Amsterdam time from four hours, 11 minutes to three hours. This route is presently dominated by air travel.

Maastricht also kicked off the key TGV Est project from Paris to Frankfurt and Zürich via Strasbourg. Opened in June this year, it will be extended to Munich early in 2008, cutting the journey time from Paris to Munich to just over six hours.

Already there are high-speed Paris to Madrid and Paris to Barcelona overnight services, but daytime journeys will be made possible when a new link opens between Perpignan and Figueres within the next two years. In Austria, lines are being upgraded to increase speeds to up to 250km/h on routes west from Vienna. A new generation of high-speed trains, Railjets, will be introduced next year, followed later by services to Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia.

High speed has never been a feature of Switzerland’s highly regarded rail network because of the country’s mountainous terrain and the short distances between its major cities. The new 34km Lötschberg Tunnel, which opened for freight in June, will also carry passenger trains from next month, significantly speeding up travel times through the Alps. Zurich to Zermatt will then take three hours, 12 minutes, shortening the journey by 72 minutes. Two further Alpine tunnels are planned: the 63km Brenner Tunnel (the world’s longest), scheduled to open in 2018-20, and the 15km Ceneri Base Tunnel, due for 2019.

By then, extensions to France’s TGV network south-west from Tours should be a reality. In addition, an eastward route from Lyon to Turin would link up with Italy’s high-speed route to Naples and Venice.

Arguably, the final proof that railways are set to compete head-to-head with airlines is the planned roll-out by operators of cross-border frequent traveller schemes offering “train miles”. EB