European passenger rail innovation and the competition from electric cars

The European rail sector has united within the Shift2Rail programme to develop new technologies to increase the competitiveness of European rail. However, technological development, such as electrification, is also rapid in the road sector. Here, we model the effects of Shift2Rail innovations on rail market shares for three passenger transport use cases: high-speed, regional, and metro corridors. We find that Shift2Rail innovations could increase high-speed and regional rail market shares substantially in the scenario without the high penetration of electric cars, but only moderately when there is high penetration of electric cars. Since the competition from electric cars will increase over time, the best chance of sustaining or increasing the rail market share lies in the near future. Our results further suggest that electric cars are less competitive in congested metropolitan areas and hence pose less of a threat to metro corridors.