How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils in other countries anyway.<p>Not that the network is that good in France though, Paris-Lyon-Marseilles has been nice for years, the connection to Lilles (and now to Bruxelles in Belgium as well) and to London via the channel tunnel is nice, a line recently opened to the east of the country (Strasbourg) but the TGV network has a few glaring issues:<p>* Everything goes through Paris. Lyon-Paris takes 3 hours, Paris-Strasbourg take about the same time, but a direct from Lyon to Strasbourg (not via Paris) takes 6 hours even though there is pretty much the same distance (~450km) betweem all of them (yep, Paris-Lyon-Strasbourg almost forms an equilateral triangle). Likewise Paris-Marseille (800km) takes 4h but Marseille-Nice (south-east to south-east but further east, 200km) will be 3h30<p>* There are no LGV (high-speed train lines) to western France, they stop at Le Mans and Tours (200~250km from Paris) so travelling from Paris to Marseille (800km) takes 4h, and Paris to Bordeaux (550km) will take you 4h as well (as the TGV has to use regular lines for half the travel). Paris to Toulouse (670km direct, 780km via Bordeaux) will waste at least 7h (TGV to Bordeaux then regional train).<p>Thankfully this is changing, there are new lines in the work and projected to start solving this issue (see dotted lines: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_TGV.png" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_TGV.png</a>) and overall TGV is awesome, but it's nowhere near perfect right now.<p>PS: I note that my timings differ from Spiegel's, I got mine from the SNCF database so...<p>PPS: For those unfamiliar with french geography and cities, Paris is of course the french capital (inner city population 2.2M, 11.7M including suburbs), Marseilles is France's second biggest city (852k inner, 1.6M metro), Lyon comes third (472k inner but 1.75M metro), Toulouse is the fourth biggest (437k inner, 1.1M metro), Nice stands at 5th (348k inner, 990k metro), Strasbourg 7th (273k inner, 638k metro) and Bordeaux is 9th (250k inner, 1M metro)

A accurate portrayal of the problems, but I would very much like to add that actually going to places with a ICE really is a joy. I always prefer it to traveling by car, even if I have to travel some part of the way with a slower regional train.<p>(That might be because traveling by train is just plain cool, period. I once took that Russian night train to Krakow – that was a unique experience.)

this article is a good demonstration of the all-or-nothing big-government requirements of high speed rail.<p>In the two countries which have working, effective, high speed rail networks (France and Japan) it cost billions, took many years and required 100% government commitment to achieve. Only a few countries have the political setup to achieve something like that.

It's not the trains that are the problem, it's the tracks. There are enough high-quality, high-speed trainsets to choose from (TGV, Velaro, ETR 500+, AGV, etc), but they don't have enough track to run them on.<p>Spain gets it. There, the government has invested an insane amount in a dedicated HS infrastructure which is used by all types of (high-speed) trains. Madrid-Barcelona is 3 hours and has already halved the need for the air shuttle that runs between the cities.<p>What we need is for governments to stop trying to do everything and do what they do best: Build the rail infrastructure according to the relevant standards (ETMS, ERTMS) and cooperate to fill the gaps in the network (Perpignan-Figueras, Lyon-Turin, etc). Then let private companies do what they do best: Run the trains, compete and drive down prices.

I wonder how many more decades before we get high-speed rail in the US... I've been on the trains in France and Japan and it's a great way to travel.

Auf Deutsch: <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,699086,00.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,699086,00.html</a><p>Spiegel Online should really give a link to the original German articles from corresponding international edition articles. Had to go back through @Spiegel_alles to find it on twitter.<p>I'm spoiled by Wikipedia.