In Search of High Speed Rail: Make Trains Sexy Again

Guest post by Jordan Pokorney

This past September, I embarked on a two-week rail vacation across Germany and France. While taking some much-needed time off to celebrate the end of another beautiful summer, I wanted to learn more about the success of high-speed rail in Europe to see what takeaways could be had for those of us here in the United States. I am by no means an expert on transportation policy, so I decided to meet with local transit and urban planning experts along the way. I wanted to walk away from this trip with a clearer impression of how this kind of infrastructure can shape communities. And of course, as a railfan, I was eager to finally experience high-speed rail for the first time.

Yours truly in Nürnberg, Germany

I decided on Berlin as the starting point of my itinerary. Germany is an exquisite place to visit for train nerds. The railways have been a deeply woven component of the national culture since the first German rail lines were built in 1835. A visit to the Deutsches Technikmuseum, housed in the remnants of a former engine shed, was the perfect place to begin exploring this relationship. A placard greeting visitors to the rail exhibit likened the advent of railways in the early 19thcentury to the dawn of the Internet in the late 20th. In both epochs, humanity found itself rapidly more connected than it had ever been before. I found the comparison to be quite powerful, and it set the mood for the rest of my journey.

Musings on the transformative power of railways at the Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin

The following morning, I caught a nine o’clock Inter-City Express (ICE) train to Nürnberg, giving me an excuse to check out the epic Berlin Hauptbahnhof. This mammoth station is unlike anything this side of the Atlantic. Its completion in 2006 was a symbolic moment in the city’s post-Wall reunification, allowing for seamless transfers between north-south and east-west mainlines in the German capital. The station itself is a multi-level symphony of platforms and amenities that transforms the horizontal reality of rail travel into a vertical wonder. Take away the trains, and you could be forgiven for thinking you were at the Mall of America.

Overlapping mainlines criss-cross at Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Before long, our sleek ICE train, with its iconic grey and red livery, pulled into the station, and we were soon making our way south towards Bavaria. Deutsche Bahn’s flagship service is decked out with modern amenities such as LCD displays, Wi-Fi, cozy seats, a restaurant car, and at-seat food and beverage service for first class passengers. It was an exquisite travel experience as we zipped through the idyllic German countryside at 150 mph.

After a few beautiful days in the picturesque (and infamous) medieval city of Nürnberg, I set out for another major travel day. I caught another ICE bound for Frankfurt, transferred to one bound for Basel, Switzerland, then hopped aboard an SNCF commuter train to the Alsatian city of Mulhouse. Unfortunately, it was here that I began to experience DB’s rather notorious reputation for delays, but fortunately, I had incorporated enough buffer time between transfers that this wasn’t a real issue for me. Even when I pulled into Basel an hour behind schedule, frequencies for the SNCF commuter train were so great that I was able to board another one within fifteen minutes.

A westbound ICE train at Frankfurt am Main

Boarding a westbound ICE at Frankfurt am Main

Mulhouse possesses a noteworthy duality: it is home to both the national railway museum of France, the Cité du Train, as well as the Musée National de L’Automobile, which holds one of the largest collections of cars in the world. I decided to pay a visit to both museums, as cars and trains have often had a rather adversarial co-existence, and I walked away with one simple thought:

We need to make trains sexy again.

There is so much work to do in the fight to reduce car dependency and improve passenger rail service in this country, but the most Herculean feat before us might just be shifting the average American mindset regarding trains. When trains were the dominant mode of intercity travel, the degree to which we valued them could be seen in their visual design. Walking between the rows of gleaming, colorful rolling stock at the Cité du Train felt like walking through an art gallery of steel. Visit any American train museum and you’ll see the same thing. These machines were beautiful. They were sexy. And this is not so much a comment on modern train design as it is an observation on a generalized perception of rail as a bygone, outdated, and slow mode of travel. In a country where the system has favored low-density development, freeways, and air travel, it is essential to make it known that it does not have to be this way.

French railway history as preserved at Cité du Train, Mulhouse

Making trains sexy again means understanding their full potential as legitimate modes of transportation. It’s not just about communicating that they’re good, but that they’re awesome. When trains are given the financial and cultural buy-in to actually work properly, they are. Good trains, in every sense of the phrase, bring people together. As I write this post in the shadow of Inauguration Day, I can’t help but wonder whether our nation would be so polarized if we had something like a national high-speed rail network. Could our perceived differences lose their power just that much if it were just that much easier to get around this massive, diverse country, where we struggle so much to find common ground?

The final week of my trip was as amazing as the first. I made the acquaintance of a few wise architects in both Paris and Berlin and rode several other wonderful high-speed trains, including the famous TGV. I learned so much about intercity rail, public transit systems, community design, and how they all interconnect. However, as I touched back down at O’Hare, I felt like I was coming home with more questions than when I had started.

I still have high hopes for the future of American passenger rail. We just need to make it a sexy one.

A TGV awaits passengers in the early morning hours at Gare du Nord, Paris

A group of friends is talking at a table on a moving train.

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