As Europe’s railway networks reach their limits, the conversation is moving from increasing traffic to deciding who can access the remaining precious train paths, as noted by Executive Editor Nick Kingsley. The capacity shortfall across Europe is now a pressing issue, with every slot on the principal corridors being fiercely contested by emerging and established players.

The high-profile debate often centers around new entrants looking to expand the market and chip away at the incumbents’ share. The recent struggle of Italo to enter the German long-distance market exemplifies this. The federal networks agency Bundesnetzagentur’s proposal to change DB InfraGO’s train path allocation rules paved the way for Italo’s order of 26 Velaro high-speed trains from Siemens Mobility on July 20.

Czech national operator České Dráhy has also navigated this complexity, with Head of International Affairs Jan Ilík explaining the pressures on both new and incumbent operators. He highlighted the challenge of managing an increasing number of trains, stating, ‘While everybody agrees that we need more trains, it is not easy to manage so many on the network.’ Ilík hopes that the EU Capacity Regulation and the European Railway Platform will aid in expanding cross-border operations, but questions remain on how new entrants can be guaranteed access without reducing services from existing operators.

In Germany, the Italo case encapsulates this dilemma, with some Länder transport authorities considering an appeal against the regulator’s ruling due to concerns over their locally specified services being displaced. The Netherlands, meanwhile, faces an international versus domestic capacity allocation issue, with the European Commission suggesting that the Dutch government may be breaching EU anti-trust regulations by prioritizing the state-owned operator NS.

The Dutch government is now tasked with responding to the Commission’s concerns within two months. They are focusing on implementing the new European regulation on railway infrastructure capacity, which aims to create more uniform priority rules across Europe when capacity is scarce. The Polish government is also looking to a structured service pattern approach, inspired by the Swiss Taktfahrplan, to integrate the emerging Port Polska high-speed lines with the legacy network under the Zintegrownana Sieć Kolejowa programme.

The potential for rigid timetabling rules to become a form of state control over a theoretically commercialized market is a concern. French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot has proposed that future contracts for operating conventional inter-city services should include clauses requiring winners to serve rural stations, but the practical enforcement of such measures remains unclear.

Ultimately, the tension arises from the stakeholders’ commendable desire to increase rail usage, both passenger and freight. However, with the cost and complexity of adding infrastructure capacity seeming more daunting than ever, the delivery of growth risks becoming a zero-sum game, where one user set is favored over another. Resolving these disputes, whether on a timetable or in regulatory hearings, is likely to become a core task for Europe’s rail sector in the coming years.

This article first appeared in the August 2026 issue of Railway Gazette International