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...owned monopolies, is ready for a renaissance of its own. A looming round of deregulation is set to spark an industry restructuring, pitting existing state-owned railroads against smaller private upstarts. At the same time, countries including Spain, Italy and France are spending billions of dollars on new high-speed railroads and rolling stock to compete with airlines. All this means one thing for travelers in Europe contemplating a switch from increasingly stressful and time-consuming air travel to more civilized rail: all aboard. (See pictures of Paris...
Even before deregulation, Europe's rail industry has been modernizing and expanding. France, which has Europe's largest high-speed rail network, plans to more than double its track length from 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to 2,500 miles (4,000 km) by 2020. Spain is aiming to leapfrog France as high-speed leader with a $130 billion expansion; when completed in 2020, 90% of all Spaniards will live no more than 31 miles (50 km) from a station served by Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) trains, which have a top speed of 218 m.p.h. (351 km/h...
This burgeoning of national high-speed networks is allowing trains to challenge airlines on shorter trips even before deregulation comes into force. The Eurostar service - the lucrative 21⁄4-hour route between London and Paris - already controls 70% of the travel market between the two capitals. Opened in 2007, a high-speed rail link between Madrid and Barcelona that cut intercity travel time to 21⁄2 hours has grabbed 50% of that market. Similar effects have been seen in Paris-Lyon, Paris-Brussels and Hamburg-Berlin transport links, where domination by fast trains has led airlines to reduce...
Still, no one is predicting railroads will put airlines out of business. Railteam, a ticketing consortium of seven leading high-speed rail operators, aims to boost the number of people who now use fast trains for international European travel each year from 15 million to 25 million by 2011. That compares with some 160 million who travel across borders by air in Europe every year, a number that is expected to double by 2020. The railroads' relatively modest growth expectations are grounded in some harsh economic realities: new high-speed rail lines take years to plan and build as well...
...effort to gain operating efficiencies and to outmaneuver rivals, some of Europe's main rail operators are already forming partnerships. SNCF, for example, runs a high-speed Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Cologne service called Thalys along with Belgian rail operator Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Belge (SNCB) and Germany's Deutsche Bahn (DB). DB also uses the French company's track to operate its high-speed Intercity-Express (ICE) trains between eastern France and Paris. But, despite their cooperation on some routes, DB and SNCF are locking horns over Eurostar. The French have a majority stake...