Among all the European nations, Switzerland uses its railway network to travel more compared to other land transport means. Almost 17 percent of Swiss land transport passenger kilometers were attributable to trains in 2018. In terms of total passenger traffic, Germany and France were on top of their European neighbors with a passenger rail traffic of more than 50 billion passenger kilometers each.
Longer infrastructure, happier passengers?
Europe has a vast train infrastructure with more than 200,000 kilometers of railway lines in use. Germany is, by far, the European country with the longest railway lines. In 2020, the length of German railroads in use reached almost 40,000 kilometers. In recent years, a trend in the European rail market is the expansion of its high-speed infrastructure, which has more than tripled in the past twenty years. In this area, Spain is the leader with almost 3,500 kilometers of high-speed railroads in 2020.Despite its extensive rail network, the relevance of rail travel in Europe has declined over the last decades due to a substantial focus on the region’s road and air transport. Therefore, the country with the longest railroads is not always the one that offers a better service. One clear example is Germany where only 70.6 percent of the long-distance and high-speed train services were classified as punctual in 2018. Latvia had the most punctual rail services in this category, with 98 percent of long-distance trains arriving on time.
