Distributive effects in the European intercity rail network: A geovisual analysis of the impacts of rail infrastructure projects

The transportation sector causes around 28.5% of the European greenhouse gas emissions. Passenger transportation by road and air is thereby particularly problematic. However, the European rail network is in desperate need of improvements and upgrades to realize a shift toward sustainable mobility by rail. As a series of projects are currently being planned or are under construction, analyzing how they affect passenger train travel is essential. Nonetheless, such studies do not yet exist on a European scale, and local studies fail to address distributive effects. This thesis models the current full-scale European intercity rail network based on infrastructure and timetable data to fill this research gap. The modeled network is updated with new travel times resulting from all currently known projects which will be completed by 2050. A series of analyses, including network metrics such as the average shortest path length, node and edge betweenness centrality, and node closeness centrality, is conducted in close coordination with geovisual approaches such as flow and dot maps, cartograms, and isochrones. The results showcase how distributive effects strategically reshape core corridors of European train travel and particularly benefit peripheral regions. Besides the prominent Fehmarn Fixed Link, Rail Baltica, Euroalpin Tunnel, and Brenner Base Tunnel, a group of southeastern European projects emerges as an unexpected yet particularly relevant component in reshaping the continent’s future rail network. The results show that new corridors are likely to emerge while certain peripheral regions particularly benefit in terms of accessibility and connectivity within the full-scale European context. Case studies moreover illustrate the dense political and planning-strategical dynamics surrounding such projects.