EUROPE’S BIGGEST EMBARRASSMENT
The map says it all – western Europe is plastered with high-speed rail links, but the UK isn’t. The reasons are historical. The rot set in during the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government consciously decided to pursue roads instead of rails. In 1993 her successor John Major hastily privatised British Rail, splitting a hitherto unified rail network into over 100 different companies in order to maximise revenue, mostly in the face of enormous public opposition.

In fairness to Major, he was partly acting on the EU’s open access Directive 91/440, which required all EU member states to separate “the management of railway operation and infrastructure from the provision of railway transport services”; the idea was that trains belonging to different companies should be able to compete on the same track. Germany is grappling with this issue now.

Small train operators don’t tend to nurture large projects, however, and that might explain why the UK has failed to build any high-speed track (with the exception of the politically strategic High Speed 1). In a railway policy document published earlier this year the UK government rejected the case for High Speed 2, the blueprint for a north-south high-speed link, directly contradicting its pledge to improve public transport and reduce road traffic congestion.

BORDER CROSSING
The LGV Perpignan–Figueres is an international high-speed rail line that opens in 2009. The 44.4km line will cross the French–Spanish border through an 8.3km tunnel bored under the col du Perthus. This section will be joined to two future high-speed lines: Barcelona-Figueres (under construction) and Montpellier- Perpignan (in the early planning stages). The contract to build the line was awarded in February, 2004 to the TP Ferro consortium, a combination of Eiffage (France) and Actividades de Construcción y Servicios/Dragados (Spain). The group will construct the line for an estimated €1.1bn and operate the line for 50 years. It will receive a public subsidy of €540m from the EU, France and Spain. Passenger journey times will drop to five hours, 35 minutes for Paris to Barcelona and three hours, 50 minutes for Perpignan to Madrid.

NACH BERLIN
Europe’s largest two-level railway station opened last May after construction dating back to 1992. Designed by Hamburg architects Gerkan, Marg + Partners, the station forms the hub of a complex, fully integrated regional rail system including international high-speed links. The main concourse provides roughly 44,000m² of retail space, while the glass roof incorporates photovoltaic panels, emphasising the environmentally friendly nature of rail travel.

NEARER TO REMBRANDT
Combined with the UK’s first high-speed link, the final stretch of high-speed track to Amsterdam from Brussels via Rotterdam will soon make it a four-hour journey from London and a three-hour journey from Paris. This will surely generate keen interest given that Schiphol Airport processes 46 million passengers a year and is reviled almost as much as Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle by business travellers.

HAPPY KOHL
Germany’s former chancellor will be pleased that his country is embedded in Europe like never before. First there was the single currency and now there’s TGV Est, which connects Paris to Frankfurt and Zürich via Strasbourg.

A QUICK BEER
Munich will connect to TGV Est next year, reducing the journey time to Paris to six hours. By 2020 it will connect south to the Brenner Tunnel and on to Italy’s own high-speed network.