The Thalys is two to three times as expensive as the Étoile du Nord, while it's only 25% faster. Converted to the current kilometre charges of the Belgian, French and Dutch railways, a single ticket Paris-Amsterdam over the same route (the blue line) would now cost 66 euro, regardless of whether you buy it two months in advance or right before you leave. The fare for the Étoile du Nord was a fixed amount calculated according to a rate per kilometre. The relatively modest time gain of the Thalys has a steep price. Some years after the arrival of the high speed service, the direct night train between Paris and Amsterdam was also abolished. By 2011, when the whole section was equipped with new high speed track, the travel time of the Thalys had come down to 3h19, about one hour faster than the 1995 Étoile du Nord. It takes another, somewhat longer route via Lille, which is depicted by the blue line on the illustration. In 1996, the Étoile du Nord was retired and replaced by a high speed train which is still running today: the Thalys. The itinerary of these services is indicated by the red line in the illustration on the right. At that time, the route was also covered by a night train which took eight hours. ĭuring the subsequent decades, the rolling stock was modernised, the capacity of the line was extended with extra trains, and the length of the journey was gradually reduced.īy 1957, travel time had been shortened to five and a half hours, by 1971 it was five hours, and in 1995, the last year of its operation, the Étoile du Nord did the trip in four hours and 20 minutes. There was one train per day in each direction. The Étoile du Nord, a train operated by the Belgian Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits, covered the 545 km long route in about eight hours. The first direct train between Paris and Amsterdam was established in 1927. The section between Paris and Amsterdam is a busy trajectory with a long history. The final link between Barcelona and the French border was inaugurated December 15, 2013.
It is now possible to travel all the way from Barcelona to Amsterdam by high speed train, a trip of 1,700 km. Strangely enough, many of these abolished routes are almost as fast, and sometimes even faster, than the new, expensive high speed connections.Īs an example, let's have a look at the route which I cover most often: from Barcelona, Spain (where I live) to the Netherlands and Belgium (where I grew up).
As more and more reliable train routes are shut down in favour of high speed lines, international train travel becomes prohibitively expensive. Every year, it becomes harder to keep my promise, and the advance of the high speed train is to blame.
However, this is not the time to get lyrical about the pleasures of long-distance train travel. It gets you anywhere, anytime, and it's much more fun and interesting to travel by train than by air. Europe has the most amazing railway network in the world. I went as far north as Helsinki, as far south as Málaga, and as far east as Budapest. Since then, I have been travelling across Europe almost exlusively by train (apart from the occasional boat trip), good for some 70,000 km of long-distance travel. Hopping on a plane would be a hypocritical thing to do when you run a publication called Low-tech Magazine. Almost as fast as the high speed train, but two to three times cheaper.Īrticle also available in French, Spanish and German.įive years ago I promised my readers I would not fly anymore. Picture: The Étoile du Nord Paris-Amsterdam (1927-1995). Quite a few of these services were even faster than today's high speed trains. Earlier efforts to organize speedy international rail services in Europe accompanied affordable prices and different ways to increase the speed and comfort of a rail trip. As a result, business people switch from full-service planes to high speed trains, while the majority of Europeans are pushed into cars, coaches and low-cost airplanes.Ī look at European railway history shows that the choice for the elite high speed train is far from necessary. The introduction of a high speed train connection invariably accompanies the elimination of a slightly slower, but much more affordable, alternative route, forcing passengers to use the new and more expensive product, or abandon the train altogether. High speed rail is destroying the most valuable alternative to the airplane the "low speed" rail network that has been in service for decades. As a regular long-distance train traveller in Europe, I have to say that the opposite is true. According to the International Union of Railways, the high speed train "plays a key role in a stage of sustainable development and combating climate change". High speed rail is marketed as a sustainable alternative to air traffic.