Over the last few years, Europe’s railway networks have undergone a major revitalisation, with new sleeper trains and high-speed routes launching seemingly every other day across the continent. And now another massive project has been proposed, and it’s set to slash journey times between some major European cities.
Austria’s government and national rail operator ÖBB have just released plans for a ‘bold’ project, set to vastly expand and improve the country’s regional and international rail connections between now and 2040.
The proposals include 67 projects across 25 clustered areas, and it’s all to make rail travel more appealing. The plan outlines that by 2040 (the proposed date of completion) passenger trains will travel a total of 255 million km per year.
One of the most exciting projects is the flagship development of a double-track line in Upper Austria and Bavaria (known as the New Innkreisbahn route). Not only would this cut the length of the journey between Vienna and Munich from four to just two and a half hours, but it’d make connections to Paris much quicker, too.
But it’s not just the international connections that are set to be transformed. Vienna’s local transport services would also be upgraded, and the line between Vienna Heiligenstadt and Vienna Praterkai would be expanded. Plus, lines in the Bregenz area would make transport to the Rhine Valley much easier, too.
There’s no denying this project is pretty ambitious, and all these improvements don’t come cheap – all together, the proposed measures are estimated to cost a whopping €26 billion.
But the government certainly sees the railways as a worthwhile investment – three years ago, they launched the ‘Klimaticket’, which was praised by Greenpeace as the best scheme of its kind in Europe for covering all modes of transport, and there was even a campaign to get more people to use trains by giving away a year of free public transport in exchange for a tattoo!
Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s Climate Protection Minister told euronews that ‘It is a rail network for a climate-neutral Austria in which climate protection and good mobility go hand in hand.’
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