Average train speed in Europe calculated by trains from capital to 5 biggest cities
September 15, 2024
Average train speed in Europe calculated by trains from capital to 5 biggest cities
https://i.redd.it/vspro7qfx1pd1.jpeg
by Sium4443
29 comments
If it wasnt for Palermo being the 5th biggest city Italy would easily be 200km/h (literally 2 hours to cross 3km of sea)
The average for Romania is 75 km, 2 and a half hours.
This map is either claiming the Channel Islands are a part of France or that they have their own high-speed rail network.
Alderney actually does have a railway but at these speeds it would take around a minute to go from one end to the other.
So sad that the countries of former yugoslavia and Albania don’t have a good rail network.
I’d love to do interrail there.
Spain has the second largest high speed rail network on the planet
I am curious how the creator defined city? Is it by the proper city or the metropolitain area as well? Is it by population or by land area?
Also which station is selected in each cities when there is more stations? (Eg. a TGV station in the outskirts will give greater values than the downtown one.)
Based on these criteria i could compute very different results to multiple of countries.
Also must note the eg. Switzerland has no capital, so the value there is just pointless.
You can’t even go by train from Albania’s capital to the five largest cities in the country.
Germany slows down Austria. Many trains go through “Deutsches Eck” where the train is significantly slower. (except passing Arlberg)
How do the ticket price lmao
I guarantee we’re top
Honestly everything above 100 km/h is already astounding to me, given these are average speeds which include stops and low speed passages. Cars usually move with average speeds of (significantly) below 100, even if most of your drive is on a motorway.
Albania use’in steam engine or what ?
Choochoo mf
Spanish trains are great
Population of the 5 biggest cities and distance to Stockholm, Sweden:
* 604,616 Gothenburg (Göteborg) – 398 km * 362,133 Malmö – 585 km * 177,074 Uppsala – 65 km * 155,989 Örebro – 200 km * 127,799 Västerås – 103 km (yep, Game of Thrones)
Looks like train speed mainly correlates with country size
Cities or urban areas? The distinction is important, because sometimes the biggest cities are somewhat irrelevant compared to the biggest urban areas (meaning less linked to the capital) and that could skew the data.
Also, what is the source? For France the operator announces far over 200km/h of average speed to the main city. The slowest is Paris Toulouse with 195km/h. The highest Paris-Strasbourg with 284km/h. Your average is 195, which is strange. Sounds like the lowest.
It looks like europe is getting sucked into the warp
Now show the data with the delays taken into account 😅
That strategy of calculation is very beneficial for the systems of France, Spain and Italy, which have somewhat star- and t-shaped networks
This graph likely captured the fastest connections of these three countries, but not of Germany (IIRC these would be Frankfurt-Cologne, Munich-Nuremburg-Erfurt-Halle/Leipzig, Munich-Augsburg-Stuttgart-Mannheim, Basel-Freiburg-Karlsruhe-Mannheim, Hamburg-Berlin)
Basically this dataset is cherrypicked for countries that apply the French/Japanese model of an independent centralized HSR and a much slower local train network. If local train would be obckuded to get a proper network-wide average, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic would be somewhat less behind
Also in some countries many 250/300/km/h approved tracks are used by both slow and fast trains. I assume this graph used the average of all trains on the track if that is the case, which is an unfair comparison, as choosing the slower train is done purposefully for other benefits (more stops, lower price).
If you would make this calculation for Taiwan, it would show results over 230km/h easily, because it would capture one single HSR route on which the five largest cities are located. Include literally any other train there and the value would halve…
Tldr: Compare HSR with HSR or network-wide. This map Isn’t all that meaningful.
Edit: Looking at these numbers, I think Poland and Czech Republic suffer the most from the calculation method. I would expect the junbers to be around Germany or slightly above if only RJ/IC and similar where included
Also delays are missing I think. Would destroy Germany with every method and France and Italy in a network-wide comparison
Finland can’t be correct, our long distance trains do at least 120 km/h and often more. I’d guess that it’s skewed by the existence of Espoo and Vantaa, the 2nd and 4th largest cities, which are part of the same metropolitan area as Helsinki and are thus serviced by local trains and not long distance.
Cool idea but don’t you think using this metric will automatically favour larger countries? For example, the largest cities of the Netherlands are all within 1,5 hours of eachother by train (Amsterdam – Eindhoven being the longest trip). But Rotterdam-The Hague and Amsterdam-Utrecht are both ~20 minutes. You wouldn’t be able to improve that much with high speed rail if you wanted to.
Now connections to Belgium, France, UK and Germany are interesting though. We have high speed trains to Antwerp, Brussels, Paris and London which are way more important than any HSR in the country itself. Meanwhile, everything to Germany is quite slow. Still, Germany gets the better score because it’s bigger and you probably didn’t factor in the inevitable delays
It would be great to also take into account the slope of the terrain between these cities.
The diagram is misleading because, for example, in Hungary, the railway network and train travel have played a significant role in hte past. It connected even the smallest villages with larger cities. However, there is a huge backlog in maintenance, which is why a very large percentage of the branch lines need to be closed, as neither the condition of the tracks nor the status of the rolling stock allows for transport anymore… thus only the main lines remain, where obviously higher speeds can be achieved, but the size of the country impacts the applicable maximum speed…
For example, while the distance from Madrid to Barcelona justifies a speed of 300 km/h in Spain, this is not true for Hungary.
Can Germany’s really count if your train waits half an hour outside the main station and is most likely delayed or cancelled anyway? We love Deutsche Bahn 🫠
Who would want to go to Berne though ?
Except bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists and far left activists?
Does Germany incorporate the 5h delays when calculating the train speed?
Does Moldova not have any trains? Or 5 big cities?
29 comments
If it wasnt for Palermo being the 5th biggest city Italy would easily be 200km/h (literally 2 hours to cross 3km of sea)
The average for Romania is 75 km, 2 and a half hours.
This map is either claiming the Channel Islands are a part of France or that they have their own high-speed rail network.
Alderney actually does have a railway but at these speeds it would take around a minute to go from one end to the other.
So sad that the countries of former yugoslavia and Albania don’t have a good rail network.
I’d love to do interrail there.
Spain has the second largest high speed rail network on the planet
I am curious how the creator defined city? Is it by the proper city or the metropolitain area as well? Is it by population or by land area?
Also which station is selected in each cities when there is more stations? (Eg. a TGV station in the outskirts will give greater values than the downtown one.)
Based on these criteria i could compute very different results to multiple of countries.
Also must note the eg. Switzerland has no capital, so the value there is just pointless.
You can’t even go by train from Albania’s capital to the five largest cities in the country.
Germany slows down Austria. Many trains go through “Deutsches Eck” where the train is significantly slower.
(except passing Arlberg)
How do the ticket price lmao
I guarantee we’re top
Honestly everything above 100 km/h is already astounding to me, given these are average speeds which include stops and low speed passages. Cars usually move with average speeds of (significantly) below 100, even if most of your drive is on a motorway.
Albania use’in steam engine or what ?
Choochoo mf
Spanish trains are great
Population of the 5 biggest cities and distance to Stockholm, Sweden:
* 604,616 Gothenburg (Göteborg) – 398 km
* 362,133 Malmö – 585 km
* 177,074 Uppsala – 65 km
* 155,989 Örebro – 200 km
* 127,799 Västerås – 103 km (yep, Game of Thrones)
Looks like train speed mainly correlates with country size
Cities or urban areas?
The distinction is important, because sometimes the biggest cities are somewhat irrelevant compared to the biggest urban areas (meaning less linked to the capital) and that could skew the data.
Also, what is the source? For France the operator announces far over 200km/h of average speed to the main city. The slowest is Paris Toulouse with 195km/h. The highest Paris-Strasbourg with 284km/h. Your average is 195, which is strange. Sounds like the lowest.
It looks like europe is getting sucked into the warp
Now show the data with the delays taken into account 😅
That strategy of calculation is very beneficial for the systems of France, Spain and Italy, which have somewhat star- and t-shaped networks
This graph likely captured the fastest connections of these three countries, but not of Germany (IIRC these would be Frankfurt-Cologne, Munich-Nuremburg-Erfurt-Halle/Leipzig, Munich-Augsburg-Stuttgart-Mannheim, Basel-Freiburg-Karlsruhe-Mannheim, Hamburg-Berlin)
Basically this dataset is cherrypicked for countries that apply the French/Japanese model of an independent centralized HSR and a much slower local train network. If local train would be obckuded to get a proper network-wide average, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic would be somewhat less behind
Also in some countries many 250/300/km/h approved tracks are used by both slow and fast trains. I assume this graph used the average of all trains on the track if that is the case, which is an unfair comparison, as choosing the slower train is done purposefully for other benefits (more stops, lower price).
If you would make this calculation for Taiwan, it would show results over 230km/h easily, because it would capture one single HSR route on which the five largest cities are located. Include literally any other train there and the value would halve…
Tldr: Compare HSR with HSR or network-wide. This map Isn’t all that meaningful.
Edit: Looking at these numbers, I think Poland and Czech Republic suffer the most from the calculation method. I would expect the junbers to be around Germany or slightly above if only RJ/IC and similar where included
Also delays are missing I think. Would destroy Germany with every method and France and Italy in a network-wide comparison
Finland can’t be correct, our long distance trains do at least 120 km/h and often more. I’d guess that it’s skewed by the existence of Espoo and Vantaa, the 2nd and 4th largest cities, which are part of the same metropolitan area as Helsinki and are thus serviced by local trains and not long distance.
Cool idea but don’t you think using this metric will automatically favour larger countries? For example, the largest cities of the Netherlands are all within 1,5 hours of eachother by train (Amsterdam – Eindhoven being the longest trip). But Rotterdam-The Hague and Amsterdam-Utrecht are both ~20 minutes. You wouldn’t be able to improve that much with high speed rail if you wanted to.
Now connections to Belgium, France, UK and Germany are interesting though. We have high speed trains to Antwerp, Brussels, Paris and London which are way more important than any HSR in the country itself. Meanwhile, everything to Germany is quite slow. Still, Germany gets the better score because it’s bigger and you probably didn’t factor in the inevitable delays
It would be great to also take into account the slope of the terrain between these cities.
The diagram is misleading because, for example, in Hungary, the railway network and train travel have played a significant role in hte past. It connected even the smallest villages with larger cities. However, there is a huge backlog in maintenance, which is why a very large percentage of the branch lines need to be closed, as neither the condition of the tracks nor the status of the rolling stock allows for transport anymore… thus only the main lines remain, where obviously higher speeds can be achieved, but the size of the country impacts the applicable maximum speed…
For example, while the distance from Madrid to Barcelona justifies a speed of 300 km/h in Spain, this is not true for Hungary.
Can Germany’s really count if your train waits half an hour outside the main station and is most likely delayed or cancelled anyway? We love Deutsche Bahn 🫠
Who would want to go to Berne though ?
Except bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists and far left activists?
Does Germany incorporate the 5h delays when calculating the train speed?
Does Moldova not have any trains? Or 5 big cities?
Bold of you to assume that we have 5 major cities
Portugal, still in eastern europe