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High-speed railway lines are lines or sections of lines on which trains can go faster than *** kilometers per hour on upgraded lines or *** km/h on dedicated lines. In 2023, the country with the longest high-speed railway line in Europe was Spain, with a total of  kilometers. In second and third place, France and Germany had the longest high-speed railway lines, with and kilometers, respectively. Denmark had the shortest high-speed line among these countries, with a length of ** kilometers.

High-speed rail in the wider network

When comparing the length of the high-speed railway network to that of the entire railway network in 2022, we see that even though Spain had the longest high-speed railway line, it was fifth among the European countries with the longest railway networks in general, with * kilometers. Further, Germany and France were in the opposite order, with Germany having a longer total railway length. While Germany has a network length of * kilometers, France’s network is * kilometers long. This also shows that high-speed rail only constitutes a fraction of the entire rail network in European countries.

Evolution of high-speed rail

There appears to be an ever-increasing demand for high-speed rail services over the years. From 1985 to 2023, the total length of the high-speed railway lines in use in the European Union (EU-27) increased from *** kilometers in 1985 to * kilometers in 2023, an increase of over  percent. In addition, there are plans for future expansion of the high-speed rail network in Europe, where, as of 2022, about kilometers of high-speed rail kilometers were planned or under construction.