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.

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