By Arsalan Mohammad

New plans for high speed rail connections between Berlin, London and other major European cities could bring budget airline companies down to earth.

The era of budget airline travel is not without its downsides. In fact the compromises for saving cash seem to be ever-burgeoning, from the old chestnuts of limited leg room and overpriced in-flight menus to more recent “post 9/11” concerns such as tedious security checks, burgeoning queues and, most recently, not even being able to go to the toilet when you need to.

Yet Berlin’s days of cheap flight misery might be coming to an end as the mode of transport that air travel literally overtook – the humble old train – is preparing for a renaissance, thanks to a new Deutsche Bahn schedule of direct high-speed rail services connecting Berlin to Frankfurt, Cologne, Amsterdam and London.

Unconfirmed reports currently estimate that the network will operate three services a day between London St Pancras and Brussels, beginning in December 2013. The high-speed trains will then divide, with one half going north to Amsterdam via Rotterdam and another to Frankfurt via Cologne, from where high-speed intercity services will make the final link-up to Berlin.

The service has been in the works for some time now, while Deutsche Bahn have been busy working out the myriad international protocols required for a trans-European express. Having passed a glut of required safety and evacuation tests within the Channel Tunnel last October, an ICE 3 class 407 train made a successful test run through to London’s St Pancras terminus, generating a wave of excitement from media on both sides of the Channel.

A big part of the buzz was the project’s exemplary green credentials. The ICE train emits 75% less CO2 emissions than an equivalent flight, and given the increasingly dismal customer experience of budget air travel, Deutsche Bahn is banking on the service not only clawing a significant chunk back from both leisure and business travellers but also setting a new standard in rail, bringing benefits to all customers.

“For business customers and tourists alike, the ICE 3 train will be a very effective way of travelling,” comments DB’s ICE-London Project Manager, Steffen Geers. “The cars are fitted to a continental gauge. This translates to a larger carriage size, a real advantage for business clients as they now have the possibility to use the entire travel time, without disturbance, for work. But everyone will appreciate the hassle-free rides, with no interchange and much lighter security checks compared to airports – there are no limitations on liquids, no laptops to be removed from your luggage and so on. And there’s even the opportunity of booking onwards tickets within Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria on one single ticket.”

Deutsche Bahn plans to unveil a new fleet of 15 purpose-built ICE BR 407 trains, with a capacity of 888 passengers. On-board, it’ll be an oasis of calm, with amenities ranging from bars and shops to spacious, comfortable cabins with full wi-fi connectivity and further, as-yet-undisclosed bells and whistles.  Whilst the service won’t be online in time for next year’s Olympics, nevertheless, it does look like it will shake things up in a fairly big way. With an estimated journey between Germany and the UK of under five hours, a new culture of travel would appear to lurking tantalisingly beyond the horizon.

“For the first time a day trip by rail from Frankfurt, Cologne or Amsterdam will be reasonably possible,” Geers points out. “Competitive travel times, due to city centre to city centre connections, mean it will be easy to schedule meetings in London, with approximately seven hours to spend in the city before catching the train home.”

It might still seem a long way off, and no doubt the on-board menus will still veer towards the pricey side; but high-speed, regular, comfortable, good-value station-to-station connections just has to be worth waiting for.

//www.timeout.com/berlin/features/1065/deutsche-bahn

מעודכן לתאריך: פברואר 27, 2012