CNBC Business | NOVEMBER 2007

NOVEMBER 2007

Rail travel's new golden age?

It was a lousy summer for airborne business travellers.

Terrorism, industrial action, bad management and sheer passenger numbers conspired to turn what can already be a stressful experience into a truly miserable and cost-ineffective one. This is especially so if you have to use a major London airport; statistics from the Association of European Airlines recently revealed Heathrow to be Europe’s worst airport for delays, with one in three passengers being held up by 35 minutes. Rome was second-worst and Paris Charles de Gaulle third. Perhaps even more damning, the “best” airport, Brussels, still clocked up a delay averaging 37.8 minutes for one in six flights.

But while air travel is increasingly tarnished – not least by its growing environmental impact – the railways are entering a new Golden Age. Four new European lines are opening this year and next, with trains travelling up to 320 km/h. The eastern France TGV line is joined this month by a link from the Channel Tunnel to a new rail hub at London St Pancras, connecting the UK’s first high-speed line to the rest of the network. Paris will be only two hours and 15 minutes away, and Brussels less than two hours. By early next year Brussels will have new high-speed links to Amsterdam and Cologne.

Moreover, high-speed railway operators in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland have joined international services such as the Eurostar and the Paris-Brussels Thalys to form a new marketing venture, Railteam. The aim is to have one website by the end of 2008 that will allow travellers to view timetables and prices and, with one or two clicks, book tickets from one end of Europe to the other. Railteam wants to increase high-speed passengers from 15 million a year today to 25 million by 2010.

From the business traveller’s perspective, railways of all types are good news. They can offer relatively low-stress, high-productivity transport without the hangover of ground transportation, luggage restrictions and airport security. With new technology it will be far easier to keep in touch with the office.

The challenge for the railways (and particularly Railteam) is to actually deliver in terms of competitive (and transparent) pricing, coordinated ticket booking mechanisms, and high levels of service and comfort.

In other words, rail has to make a real departure from air travel.

Richard Lofthouse
CNBC European Business editor richard.lofthouse@cnbceb.com

DIARY

Events at which CNBC European Business will be represented this month MAPIC, the international market for retail real estate, takes place 14–16 November at Cannes’ Palais des Festivals
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo takes place 4–8 November at Cannes’ Palais des Festivals PRTM’s
Making Innovation Work event takes place 6–7 November at Amsterdam’s NH Barbizon Palace