Features

High-speed rail: Continental connection

20 May 2011 by BusinessTraveller
Traversing Europe’s high-speed train links is a great option for leisure breaks as well as business trips, says rail warrior Tom Chesshyre. In Cologne, a marketing executive for a major hotel chain tells me: “Whenever I go to London, it is always by train – I love it.” In Luxembourg, the banking executives I meet in the picturesque old town cheerfully describe how they often go for impromptu nights out in Brussels: “If it’s quiet here on a Saturday, we’ll just catch a train over, find a hotel and go out on the town.” In Rotterdam, a businesswoman enthuses about the new high-speed connections with the French capital, now only about two hours 30 minutes away – roughly 40 minutes less than before. Welcome to the new, faster, better-connected, shrinking Europe. While banks have been collapsing and countries going bankrupt, a quiet revolution has been taking place across the Continent – an area of endeavour that actually appears to be booming in Europe, whatever else may be going on during economic hard times. That revolution has involved the laying down of high-speed tracks linking historic European cities such as Cologne, Rotterdam, Paris and Perpignan, totally transforming our outlook on business trips and weekend breaks. There are about 6,116km of high-speed lines in Europe as I write, with a further 3,541km believed to be under construction. While researching a book, I travelled along great stretches of the relatively new tracks, including the first major line linking Paris with Lyon and Marseilles (completed as far back as 1983). I saw at first hand how well the expanding services worked, and experienced the sheer thrill of taking to the Continent by fast train – in five months, I covered roughly 17,000km in all. The rate of expansion is breathtaking. While fast trains between Amsterdam and Brussels began a couple of years ago, there are now also lines linking Madrid and Barcelona, Paris and Figueres in northern Spain (launched in December and reducing the journey time by as much as 90 minutes), and, of course, the famous 108km of High Speed One that runs from the Channel Tunnel through Kent to St Pancras, which began in November 2007, properly opening up Britain to the Continental fast-train network. If expansion continues, all sorts of travel possibilities by rail could soon open up. Taking St Pancras as a base, it is estimated that by 2013, Madrid could be reached in eight hours on Eurostar, TGV and Renfe trains, while Frankfurt could be within four hours of St Pancras with Deutsche Bahn. Instead of taking six hours to reach Geneva from London, it could be five hours on Eurostar and TGV by 2014. Meanwhile, new 322km trains along popular routes will begin to shave off minutes here and there, with 15 minutes going from the journey to Paris and 11 from the time to Brussels by 2014. And if high-speed lines are eventually laid from London to Scotland – politicians have mooted 2025 as the target date – the time to Glasgow could fall from four hours 30 minutes to two hours 40 minutes. Much of this is conjecture, dependent on government decisions and funds holding up for multimillion-euro schemes – there is even talk of a high-speed route along a new tunnel through the Alps to Italy – but there is little doubt about the direction in which things are going. I am a total convert. When I set off on my journey, which consisted of a series of fast-train weekend breaks as a tourist departing from St Pancras, I was not sure how I would take to the tracks. Perhaps there would be an interminable sense of being stuck in a carriage. Perhaps I’d give it all up after a couple of trips and return to Ryanair and Easyjet. But I was quickly won over by the new bullet trains of Europe, and there are many reasons why. A few are obvious – less check-in time (only half an hour), less hassle and shorter queues at security, more space around the seat, more legroom, and the pleasant feeling of being brought directly into a city centre rather than deposited in an airport many miles away and requiring either an expensive taxi or a train or shuttle bus. When you factor in all the nuisances of air travel, often fast trains are as quick, if not quicker, than flying. I also enjoyed their superb punctuality. Unless you are unlucky enough to get caught up in snow (which I was on one very long journey to Paris last December), they usually leave when they are scheduled. There is little messing about with departure boards announcing delays and, of course, no trouble with taxiing to runways or circling above cities waiting for landing slots. Other reasons are less tangible. Perhaps the strongest of these was simply the marvellous sense of journey as the lowlands of Europe whipped past, making way for beautiful rugged countryside on the way south, and interesting industrial towns on the routes east. This feeling of “movement”, as opposed to merely peering out at clouds, inspired thoughts and was surprisingly conducive to work. There is no doubt in my mind that it is easier to concentrate on trains than on planes, even in standard class, which I went on about half of the time. It is calmer, and you have more time to settle down, rather than spending so much of the overall journey time waiting in queues. And there were particularly good wifi connections on Deutsche Bahn ICE and SNCF’s TGV trains, though Eurostar itself had no connections at all, other than in its business lounges. Fast trains are also greener – according to Eurostar, a journey from London to Paris emits 6.5kg of carbon dioxide per passenger, while each passenger on a plane on this route is responsible for 103kg. And ticket prices are relatively low – from £69 from London to Paris or £96 London to Cologne, both on Eurostar, although it’s often difficult to find the cheapest fares at short notice, and booking onward travel with multiple operators can be tricky (see “Action stations”, businesstraveller.com/archive/2011/february-2011). Food is a little hit and miss (better on Thalys than Eurostar, which was, in turn, much better than what was served up on TGV). It’s easy to fall into the trap of sounding evangelical. But having covered more than 17,000km on the high-speed tracks, I am certain they are the way forward. Tom Chesshyre is author of Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186mph (summersdale.com, £8.99), published on July 4.
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