‘The Connecting Europe Express shows the good and bad of European rail’
At the arrival of the Connecting Europe Express in Amsterdam, CEO of Dutch national railways NS Marjan Rintel draws attention to the slow connection with Germany. “From Amsterdam you can go to Paris and back, but in that time you travel one way to Berlin. It’s important to adapt our infrastructure to that.”
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Three different gauge widths that exist in Europe? Is that a main problem? Does she know what she is talking about?
Spain has its highspeed network built in standard European gauge. And it has trains that can change gauge to the Iberian classic lines gauge. Talgo-nighttrains used to run from Spain to Paris, Switzerland and Italy. So there are no real gauge problems to connect th Iberian peninsula.
Rail Baltica will bring the European standard gauge to the Baltic EU-states within 5-10 years.
Mrs Rintel should thank transport minister Tineke Netelenbos who skipped the plans for construction of the high speed line from Amsterdam to Arnhem and the German border (HSL Oost) in 2001. It was a combination of upgrading the railway and the parallel motorway A12, supported by all communities and authorithies, which is rather unique. It could have been ready 15 years ago. But Netelenbos decided the country did not need another high speed railwayline, so only the A12 was upgraded.