Direct connection to London
By train abroad – how limitless is train travels?
“Trains over four hours are a ordeal,” said a former railway chief. But more and more people accept long train trips. How the offer develops.
Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna – and soon also London? “International long -distance traffic is booming,” emphasizes Deutsche Bahn again and again. For several years now, the state group has been continuously expanding the offer to European countries together with other lanes. The British capital could be brand new on the map of direct connections.
But how good is the international offer of Deutsche Bahn really? Where are there white spots? And what connections do the railway have on offer for the upcoming travel season?
A matter of course, direct train connections that combine European metropolises are far from being. Passengers can only dream of a European rail network that interlocks.
Ex-Bahn boss: “Train journeys over four hours are a ordeal”
This only becomes clear from which Bohei the Deutsche Bahn markets new connections such as those between Berlin and Paris. Since the end of 2024, a train has been going from the German to the French capital and vice versa – travel time around eight hours.
Sebastian Wilken, who writes about the international train journey on his Zugpost blog, welcomes such connections. Alone: ”These are lighthouses in a huge fog sea.” A train between Berlin and Paris probably doesn’t even replace three flights. “It would be nice if you had a connection every hour, because of the change in Frankfurt.”
For Wilken, the direct connections are “a bit of a marketing gag”. There are also transfer compounds – if they are coordinated. However, Wilken expressly advocates the basic idea of the new connections – “that the train confidently says: Yes, there are people who get on the train for eight hours. It was different.” At the beginning of the millennium, the former railway chief Hartmut Mehdorn said: “Train trips over four hours are a torture.”
Especially routes with long driving time grow
There was a rethink – not just on the train. The passengers also accept the new connections well. According to the train, 90 percent is not uncommon between Berlin and Paris. Three out of four passengers therefore travel the entire route. “Eight hours on the train for Paris-Berlin is now acceptable for more people than it might have been five or ten years ago,” said Runge-Far aerial board member Michael Peterson recently to the German Press Agency.
A new analysis of the federal group shows that the growth potential of border connections is high, especially on longer distances. From 2023 to 2024 there was a growth of 1.5 percent on short and medium travel width under four hours. With travel widths from four hours, it was 5 percent. The leader is the connection between Berlin and Krakow (7 hours) with an increase of almost 30 percent, followed by Hamburg-Kopenhagen (4.45 hours) with 19 percent.
Bahn speaks of the “four-hour myth”
“Contrary to the widespread assumption that travelers are more likely to avoid the train for long distances (” four-hour myth “), passenger growth is greatest there,” says the Bahn Tower.
From Frankfurt to London, the planned direct connection should only take five hours instead of currently at least six and a half. As the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported, Eurostar wants to increase the connections to Germany and Switzerland vigorously in the early 1930s. Whether this actually happens – unclear. Former railway chief Rüdiger Grube already announced in 2010 that at the latest from the end of 2013 to ICE trains Frankfurt and Amsterdam should connect to London.
A few weeks ago, the railway also announced a collaboration with the Italian Trenitalia and the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), which includes new direct connections from Munich to Milan and Rome from the end of 2026.
According to the Interest Association Allianz Pro Schiene, the direct neighboring countries of Germany are now “in most cases easy to reach by train today”. This applies to both long -distance trains and regional trains in “small border traffic,” said the head of transport policy, Andreas Geißler on request.
In eight hours from Munich to the Adriatic coast
An obstacle to cross-border rail traffic is still the delayed expansion of the infrastructure: only 28 out of 57 railway border crossings from Germany to neighboring countries are electrified. There is a lot of catching up to do in the direction of Eastern Europe.
When looking at the foreign connections of the Deutsche Bahn, it becomes clear: there are connections to neighboring countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, France or the Netherlands. What is missing are, above all, routes that go beyond, for example to Spain, Sweden, to the Baltic States or Croatia. Exceptions include Italy and Hungary.
The train is already going from Munich to Bolzano, Verona, Venice as well as Rimini and Ancona on the Adriatic coast. Travel time between Munich and Rimini: almost eight hours. After Budapest, Hamburg via Berlin and Dresden will go to a good 14 hours.
Train post railway to international trips Allianz per rail: Europe without changeover
dpa
Source: Stern
