YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE THE CAPACITY.

Ben Jones of CNN files an analysis of Europe's plans to augment their Passenger Rail network.

Breakfast in Paris, lunch in Frankfurt and dinner in Vienna -- all without the hassle and frustration of flying.

Imagine a network of modern, super-fast and comfortable trains hurtling between every major city in the European Union, providing a reliable, comfortable and sustainable alternative to air travel.

That was the vision outlined by rail industry leaders in Lyon, France, on June 29, amid ambitious European plans to double high-speed rail use by 2030 and triple current levels by 2050.

I once attempted Wien to London in a day; that came a cropper on an overoptimistic six minute connection in Köln where a platform was not available when the train from Frankfurt showed up.  The article notes a quirk in the European fast trains: they're a step back from the international Trans Europ Express of the early 1960s, let alone the Wagons-Lits overnighters.

Only a massive -- and accelerated -- expansion of the high-speed network can achieve these hugely ambitious targets, but are they a realistic and affordable proposition?

Unlike many parts of the world, Europe already has thousands of kilometers of dedicated high-speed railway.

France's world-famous TGVs, Germany's ICE and Spain's AVE have transformed rail travel over the last 40 years, but they remain largely focused on domestic markets.

It might be that running fast is less important than running regularly and reliably, but that's not the kind of shiny object that -- up to a point -- gets the political class interested.

When countries are investing billions of euros in new infrastructure, political pressure to squeeze out the maximum benefit for taxpayers is inevitable.

Building lines across international borders, even within the European Union, creates tension over who pays for what, how the contracts are allocated, conflicting national standards and regulations and a host of other obstacles.

Yes, and the Europeans don't have investor owned freight railroads whose tracks Amtrak and the Commuter Rail authorities use.  That might be a minor reason you don't see grain trains worthy of Union Pacific or Norfolk Southern getting that Ukrainian grain to market.

But before the fast tracks come, the objective ought to be frequency, connectivity, and dependability.

Sitting in the center of Europe, sharing borders with nine other nations, Germany will play a major role in any pan-European network. The German government's "TEE2.0" proposal to reboot the old Trans-Europe Express is an extension of its $88 billion "Deutschland Takt" (regular interval timetable) program, announced in 2019, which aims to provide fast and frequent inter-city rail services between all German towns and cities over a certain size by 2030.

But the biggest benefits could be felt elsewhere, in countries currently without any high-speed railways. The Czech Republic is working with the French railway industry to develop new 350 kilometers per hour (217 mph) lines that will revolutionize journey times between Prague, Brno and Ostrava and deliver much faster international links between Austria, Slovakia, southern Poland and eastern Germany.

Meanwhile, in the United States, those "other obstacles" include people living near the tracks who don't like the idea of additional tracks and trains or who can't bother to pay attention at level crossings.  A sampling:

Currently, there are unmistakable residential, environmental and business problems with the SR 417 route that do not exist with the TVR to Convention Center route. It would be a mistake to ignore the members of the public who do not want the Brightline route in their neighborhoods, or to ignore the positions taken by the regulatory bodies. It would be a mistake to ignore environmental issues, because we know the responsible state and federal agencies will not ignore those issues when a proposal is put before it.

That's for new construction in the Orlando area, with an hourly Brightline train each way and commuter trains on fifteen minute(!) headways.  One of the "business" problems is Disney, which doesn't want a railway station on their property.  Nearby, with people riding the bus in, seems to be OK.

Thus adding new tracks, even within a state, comes with all manner of procedural  troubles; expanding existing tracks, even with existing Amtrak trains, comes with all manner of procedural troubles; and restoring Amtrak service where it once ran, comes with even more procedural troubles.  "Amtrak’s continuing effort to gain access to data relating to freight traffic on the route of its proposed Gulf Coast passenger service has drawn strong protest from CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern."  One of the sticking points appears to be extending a yard lead in Mobile, Alabama, in the off chance that a freight train shows up while the one proposed passenger train a day is laying over.

Switching details and conflicting traffic modeling assumptions dominated discussions at the Surface Transportation Board’s hearing into Amtrak plans to launch passenger service between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.

The seventh and eighth days of testimony and cross-examination, spread over three weeks, on the dispute over plans for two daily Amtrak round trips precedes a three-week hiatus while the STB attends to other matters.

On Monday, Alabama Port Rail Division General Manager Rob Golden explained how the port’s short line, Terminal Railway Alabama State Docks, must occupy portions of the CSX main line in Mobile for switching moves between its Interchange Yard and both its Riverfront Yard and a coal terminal. Port attorney Jim Helenhouse stressed Golden’s extensive background as a dispatcher, trainmaster, and manager of network operations before he joined the port.

Golden said TASD trains must often wait 45 minutes to get clearance from a CSX dispatcher to leave Interchange Yard. Once cleared, the current crossover configuration will only allow them to access Track 1, the track adjacent to the former Mobile passenger platform. This means the trains can’t get a clear signal indication out of the TASD yard if any train is stopped there. However, his testimony revealed that the possibility of moving the crossover to Track 2 to avoid this conflict was never modeled.

Amtrak’s first witness Tuesday, Thomas Crowley, testified he was unable to verify that Rail Traffic Controller modeling utilized by CSX and Norfolk Southern presents an accurate picture. He said this is because train movements were represented by randomized data, further processed by a proprietary program of consultant R.L. Banks & Associates. He insisted actual railroad dispatching data should have been used instead of field interviews, but STB board members questioned whether such information even exists.

It's not that much has changed in sixty years.  I repeat myself, because I must.  "After what we've learned about climate modelling and contagion modelling, perhaps we ought be skeptical of railroad companies essentially messing about with Train Dispatcher and coming up with scary scenarios."

How bad have things become?  Are the freight railroads really not interested in replacing the tracks so many of them tore up from the 1960s to the turn of the century?  Are there no records of train movements generated by the centralized traffic control computers for the main line, let alone train sheets for the districts controlled by track warrants?  How seriously should we take Amtrak or the state Departments of Transportation when their idea of "doing something" is to add one train a day to a route?

Is it too much to ask that the Regional Rail lines offer multiple trains in a day, the better to have business or shopping trips among multiple cities and towns?  Is it too much to hope that where regional trains and commuter trains share the same tracks -- including the Northeast Corridor -- some sort of joint ticketing is possible?

Probably so, as long as new rail construction, whether in Europe or the United States, is an opportunity for all the stakeholders to wet their beaks.  That's not a case for Chinese dictatorship, their massive spending on fast passenger trains notwithstanding.