Nice clue. If this was being built in Europe it would probably have a number of stops within the city area including opposite outskirts, the center and the airport.
Totally honest question - have there been recent expansions of train lines into cities in Europe? In the last 20 years?
My default assumption right now is that this sort of grand construction is generally infeasible in countries outside of China where they generally don't care who they displace or the environmental damage, and often are building the cities from the ground up in the first place with the trains as a part of the urban planning.
I've been peripheral to a few urban light/heavy rail expansion projects in the US and the consistent issue is that even cities with a lot of urban sprawl are still dense enough that you have to displace a lot of people/businesses to build a new line and the stations around it. It's the sort of thing that's a lot easier to do when the city is young, or the train line got built in an era where you could just force people to sell their houses and move.
I'd be honestly curious if anywhere in the EU has managed to put in a totally net-new line like this outside of existing tracks that included a stop at the city center and various stops on the way into town. Almost every city-center train station I've ever been to in Europe was over 100 years old (even if the building had been upgraded) and seemingly using most of the same lines.
I can't see a Wikipedia category for recent extensions.
It will very often make sense to connect the hundred year old station to a new major line, but as with Leipzig and Malmö they also build additional stations in the centre of the city.
The recipe is really simple: don't do megaprojects. Individual projects must be of appropriate size for the level of government that is making the decisions. When there are several projects of similar size in the pipeline all the time, the government can develop and maintain the expertise needed to build the infrastructure.
We absolutely know how to do megaprojects, but unless you _really_ have to, you don't want to do a megaproject. They've _always_ been a bit fraught; it's not like there was a golden age where they were easy and had a low failure rate.
Yea, I suppose I should have been more specific - it's also obviously easier to "upgrade" a line you already have the land and space for. It's not trivial, since you have to sacrifice some of the throughput in the meantime to support the construction, but it's easier than building an entirely new line.
Also, kinda tough reading that Stuttgart link where it seems like it was generally unpopular and the police did crimes to suppress dissent. I don't really know the details to have an opinion on if they're right, but still.
Grand Paris Express will be 200 km of new track to provide massive new connectivity to the Paris suburbs. Some extends existing lines, most is completely new lines adding connectivity between RER lines much further from central Paris to enable many trips to avoid the centre of the city. It's a combination of new tunnels and elevated guideway to be fully grade separated.
Closer to home I'd point to Montreal REM which will be 67 km of track in new elevated guideway when it's all done using automated trains. Phase 1 opened last summer. They did re-use an existing tunnel through downtown, but it needed extensive repairs and reconditioning as it hadn't been is use for nearly a century.
If you're interested in what systems around the world look like and what's been possible to build I'd highly recommend RMTransit. Canadian like me, so many videos are focused here, but he has tons of explainers on metro and train systems all over the world.
Section 2 finished in 2007 (just within your 20 year cutoff!)
It links the channel tunnel with London St Pancras. Much of the London part is in tunnels and it is 100% grade separated.
The uk High Speed 2 route was also going to do this and build a new high speed rail line and station into London, but the exact issues you describe seem to mean that it will be halting at a point outside London instead possibly using existing tracks.
Overall though, High speed rail doesn't need new tracks into cities unless all the existing lines are full (or they are too slow)
It's much easier to build high speed line in the countryside and link it to the existing lines that run to existing stations in cities.
(Also the Elizabeth line in London, but's more like a metro really, even if it is 'heavy' rail)
That's good to hear! I suppose some of the sale for it is that the tunnel was already done, so the value was very clear. People were already taking that train on a slower version for business/tourism, so there was obvious value to be made expanding it.
Though, somewhat funny to me that it seems like it all got paid for by Canadian pensions?
You need an investor that's looking for something that will pay off over a long time period. Big pension funds are a natural fit. And the UK and Canada have a good relationship and a history of rail-related cooperation (e.g. a lot of UK trains are made by Bombardier).
> Totally honest question - have there been recent expansions of train lines into cities in Europe? In the last 20 years?
Yes, absolutely. London's Crossrail opened a few years ago. Paris has been building new RER lines almost continuously.
> I'd be honestly curious if anywhere in the EU has managed to put in a totally net-new line like this outside of existing tracks that included a stop at the city center and various stops on the way into town. Almost every city-center train station I've ever been to in Europe was over 100 years old (even if the building had been upgraded) and seemingly using most of the same lines.
Upgrading the existing station and existing lines, or building new lines along the same right-of-way, usually makes sense - the station is already in the right place and connects up to the existing network. E.g. Roma Tiburtina was basically completely flattened and rebuilt, but it's technically an "upgrade".
You're mostly right though, to build a new station in a city you absolutely do need a large block that you can reasonably demolish - e.g. in London the planned next high-speed rail station at "Old Oak Common" will be accommodated by demolishing a big prison (Wormwood Scrubs), and it's not exactly central. Or you build completely underground, but that's expensive and you still need to demolish stuff to make a worksite.
Frankly building a new station somewhere somewhat out of town is perfectly reasonable as a way of saving money, and generally a new business district will gradually spring up around the station - see e.g. Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, or Shin-Osaka. But you need good metro connections with the CBD, at least to start with, otherwise you end up like Haute-Picardie. IMO a lot of people who want high-speed rail in the US are putting the cart before the horse: you need to build a decent metro in a city before having high-speed rail to that city makes sense, and this kind of thing is exactly why - and one of the reasons this line works is exactly that it can go to a more "outlying" station because LA is one of the few cities in the US that has been building new metro lines over the last few decades.
Yes, it's happened. Even the UK, which has an arguably worse NIMBY problem than California, managed it (though it's getting close to your 20-year deadline):
As I understand it, east-west lines in the Baltic countries are being left in Russian gauge while new north-south lines will (of course!) be in standard gauge. Which is totally excellent until they finally get around (in some future century) to building the rail tunnel to Finland, whereupon they (i.e. Finland) will have to make some choices.
Depends where in Europe; high speed rail having a bunch of stops in a single city is a _little_ unusual, I think. However, the station would likely at least be linked into the local transport system in most countries.
