Four ways of looking at European cross-border rail links

According to absolute numbers, Central Europe can count on the most cross-border train connections on the continent. What happens, however, if we take into account the length of each country’s borders and their population sizes?

Published On: April 12th, 2021
Four ways of looking at European cross-border rail links_62cca53b5dc68.jpeg
Four ways of looking at European cross-border rail links_62cca53b5dc68.jpeg

© Adam Jan Figel /Shutterstock

Four ways of looking at European cross-border rail links

According to absolute numbers, Central Europe can count on the most cross-border train connections on the continent. What happens, however, if we take into account the length of each country’s borders and their population sizes?

© Adam Jan Figel /Shutterstock

Of all countries in Europe, Germany and Austria have the highest number of cross-border rail connections, 101 and 82 respectively. At the other extreme, with just one cross-border connection each, are Greece, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, Estonia and Finland.

Well-informed readers will of course retort that these countries clearly have extremely different geopolitical characteristics: Germany has a total of nine neighboring countries, while Austria has seven. Ireland, on the other hand, has only one border; Finland has three, two of which are in areas that are quite unsuitable for railways while the third faces Russia; Greece’s relations with at least half of its neighbors are far from relaxed, and the same is true for Kosovo.

At this link you can access the database used to create this article

In order to get a more comprehensive picture of Europe’s transnational transportation network, we decided to go beyond absolute numbers, taking into account the length of the borders and population sizes of each country.

Central European countries generally count between one and three transnational connections for every 100 km of border, with Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany holding the top spots in this particular ranking. Germany remains among the best-connected countries, despite boasting the longest border among the countries surveyed. None of the more peripheral countries have more than one connection per 100 km of border.

As for the number of connections per million inhabitants, the chart is obviously dominated by less populated countries such as Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Czechia, Hungary and Croatia. However, the chart still confirms th