Rail networks in most countries have been starved of funding while motorways lengthen, study shows

There’s a bit of good news in here:

In the four years that followed (2018-21), the average gap in investment in rail and road decreased from 66% to 34%. During that time, seven countries invested more in rail than roads – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK – while the rest spent more on roads than rail.

But ideally we need a Wales style road building freeze across Europe. We have enough roads to get everywhere, it’s purely building for capacity now and we should be shifting that capacity to rail.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    16•1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    European governments have “systematically” shrunk their railways and starved them of funding while pouring money into expanding their road network, a report has found.

    The length of motorways in Europe grew 60% between 1995 and 2020 while railways shrank 6.5%, according to research from the German thinktanks Wuppertal Institute and T3 Transportation.

    Dr Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, who was not involved in the study, said: “Most European countries have been actually encouraging car use by investing large amounts of public money into expanding motorway infrastructure.”

    The EU plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by the end of the decade from 1990 levels but has failed to make any headway in its transport sector.

    Greenpeace called on governments to move money away from roads and towards railways, public transport, cycle lanes and pavements.

    A handful of European countries have introduced cheaper public transport tickets to encourage people to shift from cars to trains, trams and buses.

    The original article contains 631 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!