Analyzing travel time efficiency over long distance railway services throughout Europe

Abstract

Long-distance railway transport is central to Europe’s sustainability and policy targets; however, long-distance railway trips are subject to inefficiently synchronized services, requiring long transfers and running at slow average speeds. We propose a metric that estimates the timetable-induced travel time efficiency, i.e., how much travel time is actually spent moving, compared to the time lost to badly synchronized transfers, excessive dwell times or suboptimal routing of services. We analyze this metric for the connections between 31,616 stations throughout Europe towards 25 main transit hubs. This metric reaches an average of around 75%: by providing better and seamless connections between fast trains along major corridors, end-to-end travel times could be 25% faster than current schedules without any specific construction of faster infrastructure. We consider 169 infrastructure projects — many of which form part of the planned Trans-European Network (TEN-T) network completion by 2050. Once the expected travel time reductions stemming from those improvements are taken into account, we anticipate a combined timetable-induced travel time efficiency of 68% compared to today, representing a future expectation of one-third shorter travel times. A corridor analysis evaluates the travel time savings along the expected high-speed core TEN-T planned to be concluded by 2050, and estimates comparable values. This analysis provides quantitative support, at a network scale and based on real-life data, to the hypothesis that a better coordination of Europe’s various national railway systems is needed and can be similarly effective for long-distance passengers as much more costly infrastructure development. The biggest policy implication from those findings is the need for increase in international collaboration and harmonization of timetabling processes to exploit the underused potential.