Length of high-speed railway lines in use in Europe in 2021, by country
High-speed railway lines are lines or sections of lines on which trains can go faster than 200 kilometers per hour on upgraded lines or 250 km/h on dedicated lines. In 2021, the country with the longest high-speed railway line in Europe was Spain, with a total of 3,627 kilometers. In second and third place, France and Germany had the longest high-speed railway lines, with 2,735 and 1,571 kilometers, respectively. Denmark had the shortest high-speed line among these countries, with a length of 56 kilometers.
High-speed rail in the wider network
When comparing the length of the high-speed railway network to that of the entire railway network in 2021, we see that even though Spain had the longest high-speed railway line, it was seventh among the European countries with the longest railway networks in general, with 16,280 kilometers. Further, Germany and France had the opposite orders with Germany having a longer total railway length,. While Germany has a network length of 39,799 kilometers France’s network is 27,057 kilometers long. This also shows that high-speed rail only constitutes a fraction of the entire rail network in European countries.
Evolution of high-speed rail
There seems to be an ever-increasing demand for high-speed rail services over the years. From 1985 to 2021, the total length of the high-speed railway lines in use in the European Union (EU-27) increased from 599 kilometers in 1985 to 11,666 kilometers in 2021, an increase of about 1,800 percent. In addition, there are plans for future expansion of the high-speed rail network in Europe, where, as of 2022, about 9,400 kilometers of high-speed rail kilometers were planned or under construction.
