European passenger rail travel continues to expand, with a flurry of new routes opening and competition heating up on key routes, including on the rail line that runs below the English Channel. Plans to streamline the booking process across Europe could also make rail travel easier and more efficient.
The European Commission is encouraging the push. At his confirmation hearing in November, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the new European commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism, said that connecting European cities by high-speed rail is “a top priority.” He also vowed to present draft regulation for a single digital booking and ticketing system for European rail before the end of his first year in office, which will fall on Dec. 1.
Demand for train travel is strong and growing. Cross-border passenger rail traffic within Europe increased 7 percent in 2024 compared to 2023, according to the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies, a Brussels-based industry group. Passenger rail traffic within individual countries increased by about 3 percent.
Victor Thévenet, the rail policy manager at Transport and Environment, a Brussels-based environmental group, described the possibility of a single booking and ticketing system as “the big thing on the agenda in 2025.”
“In a single ticket, you will be able to buy a journey that links different train operators, and you will be sure to have your passenger rights protected if something goes wrong during the journey,” Mr. Thévenet said, noting that the system would work for all long-distance and regional trains across Europe. He added that public consultations on such a plan are happening this year, and that the proposed legislation should go to the European Parliament in 2026.
Paris to Milan, and beyond
For rail-loving travelers, there are plenty of new routes to choose from.
A direct daytime service between Paris and Berlin that clocks in at roughly eight hours started in December. Tickets for the route — which also stops at Strasbourg, France, and Karlsruhe and Frankfurt in Germany — start at 60 euros, or about $62. The new route is in addition to the slower overnight service that connects the French and German capitals, which opened in late 2023.
Alberto Mazzola, the executive director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies, the industry group, described the new Paris-Berlin route as “an important connection between two major European capitals.” But he added that the route is only partially high speed; with the right infrastructure, the travel time could drop to as little as five hours. “There is an opportunity to do even better,” he said.
Paris will soon see other new services, particularly as the Italian rail operator Trenitalia increases its presence in the French market.
Trenitalia and S.N.C.F., France’s national railway company, will reopen competing services between Paris and Milan this spring, more than 18 months after a landslide in the French Alps forced the line to close. S.N.C.F.’s Paris-Milan service will begin on March 31, with tickets starting at 29 euros; Trenitalia’s service will open the following day. Both operators will include stops in Lyon and Turin, among other cities, along the route. Elsewhere in France, and also in competition with S.N.C.F., Trenitalia will begin running a service between Paris and Marseille on June 15, with stops in Lyon, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence.
The Spanish operator Renfe is also making inroads in France. The company has announced that it will soon begin running a high-speed service between Barcelona and Toulouse, in southwestern France. The three-and-a-half-hour journey will include stops in Perpignan and Carcassonne in France, and Girona in Spain, among other cities. It will run seasonally, beginning in the second quarter of this year and continuing through mid-September.
High-speed connections are also in the works between Belgrade and Budapest; Lisbon and Porto; and Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic.
New sleeper services are also getting started this year. The private operator European Sleeper has opened a seasonal overnight rail connection between Brussels and Venice, offering two services per week in February and March. The company already runs a year-round sleeper train between Brussels and Prague, a service that began last year.
The resurgence of sleeper trains has spread to Portugal and Spain, where the governments are working to reopen overnight service between their two countries. The services — which link Lisbon, Madrid and the French town of Hendaye, on the border with Spain — were discontinued when pandemic lockdowns hit in March 2020, but they could begin running again as soon as the first half of this year.
Cross-Channel competition
Competition is heating up along one of Europe’s iconic rail routes: the line that runs under the English Channel. Travelers hoping to go by train between London and the continent might one day travel with a rail operator other than Eurostar, though not before 2029 at the earliest.
Eurostar, which has had a monopoly on the cross-Channel route since the line opened in 1994, is seeing strong demand. Across its network — which includes connections between London and Paris, and London and Brussels, among other services — the operator hosted 19.5 million passengers in 2024, an increase of more than 5 percent from the year before. The company could see another boost this year, as its direct service between London and Amsterdam starts up this month, following a pause of nearly eight months because of infrastructure upgrades at Amsterdam’s Centraal Station.
But the company, which shrank its network during the pandemic, is still facing challenges. In a December report released by Transport and Environment, Mr. Thévenet’s nonprofit, Eurostar came last in a ranking of 27 European rail operators, earning low points for price, reliability and its strict policies on bicycles. (Fully assembled bikes aren’t allowed on the Paris-London service, because of security restrictions beyond Eurostar’s control. On other routes, Eurostar permits bicycles “in limited numbers and under certain conditions,” including the removal of both wheels.)
Eurostar’s chief executive, Gwendoline Cazenave, wrote in an email that she disagreed with the findings of the report, and noted the ranking “failed to acknowledge Eurostar’s major environmental contributions,” including “eliminating flights between Brussels and Paris and sharply reducing flights between London and Paris.”
Competitors are lining up. The two out front are Virgin Trains — part of Virgin Group, founded by Richard Branson — and Evolyn, a new operator led by the Spanish Cosmen family, travel-industry heavyweights.
Phil Whittingham, the managing director of Virgin Trains, said the company expects to close a deal for 12 high-speed trains in the first half of this year. He added that Virgin has applied for access to Temple Mills, a maintenance depot in London, where Eurostar trains are currently serviced. Gaining access to the depot is an essential step to launching a cross-Channel service.
“We do believe there’s room to get in there,” Mr. Whittingham said. “We think competition would be good for them, and good for us.”
Lisa O’Brien, a spokeswoman for Britain’s Office of Rail and Road, confirmed that both Virgin and Evolyn had applied for space in the Temple Mills Depot. She added that the government regulator has appointed external consultants to determine the depot’s capacity to handle more trains.
“Our next steps will depend on the outcome of that capacity study,” she said.
Richard Bowker, a former chair of Britain’s Strategic Rail Authority and now a co-host of the Green Signals railway podcast, said that there have been unsuccessful challengers to Eurostar in the past, but “this time feels different.”
Mr. Bowker, who has also worked for Virgin Group, noted the company’s “well-earned track record of being a disrupter” as well as the Evolyn team’s depth of experience in the transport sector.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “It suggests growth, and more journey opportunities, and potentially better deals for the consumer.”
Paige McClanahan is the author of “The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel.”
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