Why Train Travel Is Slower in Europe Now Than Fifty Years Ago
July 31, 2025 · Frisian News
European trains move slower today than they did in 1975, despite modern technology and billions spent on rail networks. Fragmented systems, safety rules, and political gridlock have clogged the continent's railways.
A traveler boarding a train from Brussels to Amsterdam in 1975 could expect the journey to take considerably less time than the same route takes today. The trains themselves are newer, the tracks are straighter, yet passengers arrive slower. Europe built complexity instead of speed.
European rail networks answer to dozens of separate operators and national governments, each with their own signaling systems, safety standards, and timetables. A train crossing from Germany into France hits a different technological world. Engineers must slow down to swap control systems. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany once ran more seamless operations by concentrating power in fewer hands. Modern fragmentation, dressed up as competition, has made the whole system inefficient. Passengers pay the price in lost hours.
Safety regulations have also multiplied. Modern trains must now comply with European Union rules designed for the safest possible operation. These rules, well-intentioned, force operators to build in speed buffers. Slower trains mean fewer accidents, so the logic runs. But this logic ignores what worked before: simple routes, clear rules, trusted operators. The old system trusted expertise. The new system trusts only layers of regulation.
Politicians spent tens of billions on high-speed rail projects that mostly connect major cities and empty boardrooms. Meanwhile, the bread-and-butter regional lines that most people use deteriorated. Maintenance suffered while governments chased prestige projects. A commuter from a small town now waits longer and travels slower, paying more, so that luxury express trains can run between capital cities. Investment followed bureaucratic thinking, not passenger needs.
Europe chose the safe path of rules over the hard work of coordination. No single leader could impose speed and efficiency across borders, so Brussels added regulations instead. The result speaks for itself: a continent that moves its people slower than it did fifty years ago, despite spending fortunes on the job. Sometimes more technology and more spending make things worse, not better.
Published July 31, 2025 · Frisian News