This week, the European Commission committed itself to facilitate train travel in the European Union more more. Booking train journeys should be easier and travellers should get passenger rights comparable to air passengers rights.

Booking cross-border, multi-operator train journeys must be as easy as booking an air journey consisting of different flights and different airlines. There should also be similar passenger rights. If one gets stranded, one should be assisted. Right now, that is hard. Danny wrote an op-ed on how difficult booking cross-border tickets is. I write how to cope with delays and cancellations. You need knowledge to get it right.

In its presentation, the Commission spoke of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and European Transport Corridor. What are those?

TEN-T

The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is a planned network of roads, railways, airports and water infrastructure in the European Union. The TEN-T network is part of a wider system of Trans-European Networks (TENs), including a telecommunications network (eTEN) and a proposed energy network (TEN-E or Ten-Energy). The European Commission adopted the first action plans on trans-European networks in 1990.

TEN-T envisages coordinated improvements to primary roads, railways, inland waterways, airports, seaports, inland ports and traffic management systems, providing integrated and intermodal long-distance, high-speed routes. A decision to adopt TEN-T was made by the European Parliament and Council in July 1996.

The EU works to promote the networks by a combination of leadership, coordination, issuance of guidelines and funding aspects of development.

These projects were technically and financially managed by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), which superseded the Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency (TEN-T EA). Since April 2021, the TENs are managed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA).

European Transport Corridor

There are currently ten corridors, according to Wikipedia and this EC web page. On the map, you see the United Kingdom (still) included and Croatia excluded. There are also parts of the corridors going through Switzerland and Serbia. 

These corridors include passenger trains routes, freight trains routes, but also waterways for shipping.

Corridor	Name	From	Via	To	Length
1	Baltic–Adriatic Corridor	Gdynia	Vienna	Ravenna	2400 km[
2	North Sea–Baltic Corridor	Helsinki	Warsaw	Antwerp	3200 km
3	Mediterranean Corridor	Algeciras	Lyon – Venice	Miskolc	~ 3000 km
4	Orient/East–Med Corridor	Hamburg	Budapest – Sofia	Nicosia	~ 3700 km
5	Scandinavian–Mediterranean Corridor	Helsinki	Copenhagen – Munich	Valletta	4858 km
6	Rhine–Alpine Corridor	Genoa	Cologne	Rotterdam
7	Atlantic Corridor	Lisboa	Vitoria-Gasteiz	Strasbourg
8	North Sea–Mediterranean Corridor	Dublin	Cork – Le Havre	Brussels	933 km
9	Rhine–Danube Corridor	Amsterdam	Luxembourg	Marseille
10	Strasbourg–Danube Corridor	Strasbourg	Budapest	Constanța	2137 km

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