What should be in an EU High Speed Rail Action Plan?

“EU High Speed Network Plan Announced” screamed the headline on the Community of European Railways (CER) LinkedIn page this week. It caused me to scratch my head a bit, as there is no such plan yet – this was CER getting a bit carried away with one line in the European Commission’s competitiveness compass that states “High Speed Rail Plan [2025]” on page 13.

This builds on the Mission Letter from von der Leyen to Transport Commissioner Tzitzikostas from September 2024 where such a plan is promised, but now we have a date for it – this year. The roots are further back still, in the Commission’s 2021 rail action plan that promises a doubling of high speed rail passengers by 2030.

I must say I am a little sceptical of anything the Commission puts forward that’s non-legislative: plans, strategies, concepts etc. These documents are often bla bla and too often not acted upon as a result.

But let’s try to be forgiving, and ask what should such a plan even include?

The reason CER is so keen on the idea is undoubtedly they have hopes the plan will propose building more high speed lines in Europe – CER is always happy to propose pouring concrete as a solution to any problem. I don’t deny that Europe needs more high speed lines, and importantly needs to fill in some of the gaps between some existing sections. The question is what to propose to build, and where, and whether this differs from the EU’s Trans European Transport Corridors (TEN-T). However TEN-T foresees a 160km/h minimum speed – hardly “high speed” – so some lining up of TEN-T and the idea of a high speed network is undoubtedly sensible. How to get lines built more quickly and how to finance their construction would need to be covered too.

However the tale of the under utilised high speed cross border line between Figueras (Spain) and Perpignan (France) ought to give us pause – just building lines without a plan of what to run on them is a recipe for problems. The idea of timetable based plans like Bahn 2000 (Switzerland, completed) or Deutschlandtakt (Germany, ongoing) is that they determine what to build based on desired trip times and frequencies between city pairs – so I would include a framework Europatakt in the plans (more about this idea here). Determining what to build with a framework for a timetable in mind is better than starting with a map and filling in the gaps.

Then comes the point I keep hammering – if you want more train services, you need more rolling stock. The trains themselves. So far high speed rolling stock procurement has been mostly handled by national state owned incumbent railways, and a train is ordered with a pretty detailed idea of where it will run. But this could be reversed with the development of a sort of European standard high speed go anywhere train model or models, and either state owned or private firms could lease trains from that pool of rolling stock. A kind of Airbus A320 for high speed rail if you like. Siemens Velaro and Hitachi Frecciarossa 1000 are the closest we have to this idea so far. Financing rolling stock investments has to be included somehow.

Beyond that the plan will have to cover a few significant technicalities. Implementation of a common signalling system (ETCS) to supersede legacy systems on older high speed lines is a must – as a multitude of signalling systems drives up the cost of rolling stock procurement, and can be used as a means to keep a rival out of your market. The patchwork of axle load restrictions on high speed lines act as a further barrier to the development of high speed rail – so could a European standard for axle load help somehow?

Some framework for setting track access charges is also a must – setting these charges too high might please national exchequers but limits modal shift to (high speed) rail. And while most high speed services can be run without Public Service Obligation (PSO) contracts, some nevertheless need this – so a framework for how to do PSOs cross-border would be welcome too.

So there you go. That’s what would be in the plan I would draw up. I am aware there are some quite vague ideas here, but hell, I still have a bit more detail than the one liner from the Commission and the triumphant infographic from CER.

So consider this is a conversation starter – let the debate as to what ought to be in this plan commence!