The map above shows the amount of money invested per person into each country’s train and railway system per person per year. The data comes from German rail interest group Allianz pro Schiene.
One of the most surprising things about the map is that countries with the best perceived railway systems (e.g. France and Germany) aren’t the ones investing the most. The UK spends almost twice as much per capita on it’s trains than the Germans, and four times as much as the French yet our railway system has an (unfairly) terrible reputation.
Here are the numbers by country:
- Luxembourg: €512
- Switzerland: €477
- Austria: €336
- Sweden: €277
- Norway: €276
- UK: €215
- Netherlands: €174
- Czechia: €139
- Denmark: €133
- Germany: €115
- Belgium: €101
- Italy: €92
- Spain: €70
- France: €51
And here’s more on how the data was gathered from Allianz pro Schiene (translated from German):
The basis for the comparison in all countries is the public funds that were invested at the federal level (or the central government level) in the rail and road transport infrastructure. This includes investments in the expansion and new construction of the infrastructure, as well as replacement investments in the existing network. The restriction to the federal level means that the extensive infrastructure investments at the state or municipal level, particularly in the road network, are not taken into account.
What exactly counts as rail infrastructure?
These include tracks and switches, station facilities for passenger and freight traffic, signalling systems and signal boxes as well as overhead lines and the associated power supply systems.
Why are France and Spain so far behind? The rail system works well there, doesn’t it?
Individual high-speed lines, such as in France or Spain, say nothing about the entire network. In France, certain infrastructure investments are also being made using PPP (public-private partnership) models. However, the per capita comparison only includes state investments, not investments by third parties (see above).
Wouldn’t it make more sense to make a per-kilometer comparison instead of a per-capita comparison?
Such a comparison is also possible; However, it would not lead to fundamentally different results. The argument in favor of a per capita comparison is that the differences in public investments per citizen become visible. The population is not only an important indicator of a country’s tax capacity, but also an important influencing factor for transport demand. And: A per-kilometer comparison would be too static. The rail network should grow again.
Why aren’t all European countries shown?
Researching investment figures is very time-consuming, so we have not calculated the figures for all European countries. In recent years, however, we have continuously been able to include more countries in the comparison.
Luca Valerio says
This is a nice topic on a wonderful website, but I feel that several points should be clarified. First, the sentence “countries with the best perceived railway systems (e.g. France and Germany)” includes an assumption that is questionable about Germany. The perceptio of the quality of the German railway system in Germany is extremely poor, and objective data support this. For an overview from press sources, see https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/14/its-the-same-daily-misery-germanys-terrible-trains-are-no-joke-for-a-nation-built-on-efficiency or https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-rail-crisis-how-can-deutsche-bahn-turn-things-around/a-69855637. Second, this Allianz report only focuses on data from 2024, but the report itself in its original page notes that Germany spent in 2024 at least three times the average 2010-2023; 2024 is therefore not represesntative at all of recent or average annual expenditure and is a first attempt of compensating for years of neglect. Third, as the FAQ of the Allianz report admit, the expenses considered are limited to specific sources (federal or central investments) and may heavily underestimate the investments from other sources, such as local/regional authorities or even EU financing, that is considerable in some countries. Last, the uptick in German investments should be compared with the current state of infrastructure – poor according to most indicators (see for instance https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/the-state-of-the-eus-rail-infrastructure).