The new single ticket for travel in Europe

The European Commission announced on Twitter (which I won’t call X) its plan to propose a single platform where you can buy a ticket to travel anywhere in Europe, ensuring journey continuity and passenger rights from departure to arrival.

This is obviously a great step forward, but it doesn’t really solve Europe’s rail problems. First, I’ve noticed that while there are express trains connecting major cities in neighboring countries, it’s very complicated to cross several countries at once.

The advantage of flying over the TGV isn’t so much speed as it is uninterrupted routes. Sure, it’s three times faster at peak speed, but you still have to arrive at the airport two hours early. I’m convinced that fast, affordable rail links (subsidized, for example by taxing domestic flights) would be more appealing if they allowed you to cross Europe.

Here’s the current state of the high-speed rail network in Europe: (according to Wikipedia)

As shown by the color-coded lines representing the main operators, they don’t venture much beyond their neighboring countries.

I’m taking the train from Lyon to Helsinki this summer (what an adventure! I’ll write more about it in a future post), and you have to change trains at least in Mannheim and Hamburg before arriving in Stockholm, where you can take a ferry. And even then, direct ICE trains between Hamburg and Stockholm are rare and not high-speed.

This new ticket is therefore good for trips crossing at most two countries (excluding the departure country), but it doesn’t really address the lack of high-speed trains crossing Europe. What we need are TGVs (or equivalents—something that travels at 300 km/h) that cross the continent directly, from Lisbon to Vienna via a few major cities. Like an urban network with key lines, at the scale of the European Union.

While researching, I found this image on the European Parliament’s website :

So it seems a project is already underway, but not a word about the routes! To go from Lisbon to Vienna, do you have to change trains in Madrid, Paris, and Berlin? If so, oil companies still have a bright future ahead...