Why Train Travel Is Slower in Europe Now Than Fifty Years Ago
July 29, 2026 · Frisian News
European express trains travel slower today than they did fifty years ago, despite better technology. Infrastructure fragmentation, maintenance backlogs, and political choices favoring highways explain the decline.
The average speed of European express trains has fallen since the 1970s, a decline that should be impossible given better technology and smoother rails.
Fragmentation of infrastructure explains much of it. Each country maintains its own rail network with different signal systems, power supplies, and regulatory speed limits. A train crossing four borders faces dozens of speed restrictions as it switches from one country's rules to another. A locomotive running at full speed in one section may need to drop to a much lower limit in the next. Harmonization efforts began decades ago but remain unfinished.
Budget airlines and car makers benefited while trains slowed. A sleeper train that once beat a plane from London to Rome loses the race now. Motorways expanded as rail budgets stagnated. Governments chose highways over railways. By the time freight and passenger traffic congested the existing rails, the die was cast. You can rebuild a motorway in a decade. A railway takes longer.
Deferred maintenance accelerated the decline. Many European railways postponed repairs for years. Signals failed. Bridges cracked. Tracks buckled in summer heat. Germany's Deutsche Bahn, once the pride of European rail, fell into such disrepair that journey times ballooned and on-time arrivals collapsed. The cost of catching up now consumes money that could buy new track.
The paradox is this: Europeans built faster trains but slower railways. The technology improved. The system decayed. A passenger boarding an express train today rides equipment as modern as it gets, but the journey itself takes longer than it did when their grandparents traveled. No press release announces that. But the timetable does.
Published July 29, 2026 · Frisian News