In the summer of 2022 I crossed every internal border of the EU you can cross by train. Every pair of countries where there is or was a railway line, I crossed it at least once. That was a total of 83 borders. Since then with follow up Extra Days, the May 2023 Germany borders project, and a smaller project in autumn 2023, I have now visited and examined more than 200 railway borders.

The aim of this research has been to identify international railway lines in Europe where the cross border service is deficient in some way, and what would be necessary to improve it.

The borders I have investigated fall into four categories:
– Missing infrastructure
– Missing service
– Poor service
– Ticketing or other problem

There are of course borders where it all works very well, or where the problems are so deep-seated so as to render any progress hopeless – and these places are then ones I do not analyse in more depth.

At the end of my 2022 project I identified a Top 20 borders where change was both necessary and possible (and indeed 3 of the 20 have since been fixed – see Success Stories), and I am now in the process of analysing the other borders I have visited since then, and drawing up an extended list of borders where improvement is needed.

Based on the further borders I visited in 2023, I have added a further 20 borders – meaning the current status is 37 borders that are priorities to be fixed, with 3 problems having been solved since I started my #CrossBorderRail work.

This map shows the borders I have been to so far – pink are borders visited in 2022 and 2023, orange are borders visited before that, and grey are places I have not yet been.