Cross-border rail traffic: The anger is intentional

I don’t want to talk about that here German railway scold. She can’t help it this time. And that despite the fact that today I want to tell you something about German rails.

Two weeks ago I announced that I would be writing about the Deutsches Eck here. Well, why not now, then we’ll have it behind us. The Deutsches Eck is the railway connection between Salzburg and Kufstein via Rosenheim. So if I take the train from Innsbruck to Vienna and back every week, then I have to go through that. It’s a terrible section. For the Austrians it is one of the most important traffic arteries in the country, it connects the west with the east – for the Germans it is a siding. That’s exactly how it works. Curvy, boring, poorly developed. You dawdle through it in the Railjet at less than 100 kilometers per hour, something is always broken and yes, I have spent a lot of my life there. Sometimes I even dream about it. I once told ÖBB boss Andreas Matthä that. He just said, “I understand you.”

Last week, during the Austrian autumn holidays, the section was completely closed and I took the bus from Salzburg drove to Innsbruck. A route closure during the Austrian holiday season? Well, annoying for me and others, but why should Deutsche Bahn care?

Because, and this is the real problem: rail transport is so un-European that one sometimes wonders whether the European Union simply forgot about the railways by mistake? You may have noticed that as soon as you take a train across a border, it often becomes difficult.

This is intentional!

At least it was once intentional. As in the 19th century, namely throughout Europa Railways were built, the countries moved closer together, the “space was killed” (Heinrich Heine), the countries paid meticulous attention to using different technical systems than their neighbors, from track widths to signals – in order to make things as difficult as possible for them in the event of war. to invade the country.

That’s why we’re still angry today. Because the differences remained. And the faster the trains became, the more technical equipment was needed – and the greater the differences became.

In Europe today it is not even possible to agree on a common operating language, trains have to be registered individually in each country, there are different regulations for the loading of dangerous goods, trains therefore often have to be reshunted at borders, and even a red light does not mean everywhere same. In most countries it’s called “stop”. In France and Italy: “Drive on sight”. No, this cannot be rationally explained to anyone.

By the way, it’s not just me that annoys me that the national borders on the rails are still such tough barriers. Even the highest railway official in Europe is missing 600 meters of tracks in front of his front door. No joke!

The Austrian Josef Doppelbauer has headed the European Railway Agency (ERA) since 2015. It is based in Valenciennes in France. If Doppelbauer goes to Brussels, he cannot do so by train. At least not from France. At some point there were tracks to nearby Mons in Belgium, but they were torn out – no one knows exactly why. So Doppelbauer first takes a taxi across the border and only then gets on the train to Brussels.

Of course that annoys him. How all these national railway allotments annoy him. A few years ago he called for a Eurocontrol for Rail that would regulate rail traffic transnationally – just as European air traffic control already exists for air traffic.

But things like that just take time. Much time!

An example: The route at Deutsches Eck was planned in 1851. The emperor in Vienna and the king in Munich were “inspired by the desire” to better connect the countries with one another. The route was then built and even then there was the idea of ​​a loop around it Rosenheim makes sense so that not every train has to stop and turn around in this terminal station. That would have been great for the Austrians. But Bayern had little interest; after all, people were supposed to get off at their place in Rosenheim. Either way: 132 years later the loop was opened – the celebration resembled a state act. By the way, the Austrians paid the construction costs.

So you see: When it comes to trains, you should think at least in decades or, as in this case, in centuries. Of course, this is not good news for us, who press our nails into our seats every time we cross the border and hope that everything goes well.

But I didn’t promise you good news here either. It’s still about traveling by train.

PS: Have you ever had a strange, bizarre, annoying or just funny situation at a state border on the train? Then tell us about it in the comments, I would be happy!