Need for Speed: Train Version

The numbers the commission is targeting are seriously ambitious. It will not only involve spending billions on the hardware that makes the trains run, but also making sure that access to cross-border service gets much easier. This last one is important as the physical borders between European nations might have disappeared, in the digital realm they are very much alive. Booking a journey that starts in one country and ends up in the next, let alone if it crosses a third, quickly becomes the stuff of nightmares. Changing prices, archaic or even non-existent links between systems and schedules that are built around the old nation state, create a situation that throws you back to the good old days of needing actual travel agents, the human kind, to start making calls. Compare that to booking a flight in under five minutes, often at much cheaper prices, and it is clear that there is massive work to be done.

Supposing train companies, with the help of the booking.coms of this world, can improve the customer experience before you board, will it be worth it? I would argue it could be. The time gains the politicians are aiming for are massive in some cases. Take the trip from Madrid to Lisbon, which currently takes a massive 9 hours! If the target is reached, it would drop to a very competitive 3. Having the pleasure of living near one of the lines where the future has been current-day reality for many years, Brussels-Paris, I can attest that you won't look at flights ever again once you hit those kinds of travel times by train. Sure, the actual flight is much shorter. It's all the inconvenience before and after that makes it such a hassle. Getting to an airport that sits outside of the city, going through security and boarding, landing somewhere in the middle of nowhere to fight for a cab or patiently wait for an Uber..... Compare that to jumping on your train literally minutes away from hotels, metro connections, office buildings and the general hussle and bussle of the city. Anything four hours or less has my vote.