An ETH Zurich team analysed connections between more than 31,000 European railway stations and concluded that around a quarter of long-distance journey time is spent waiting or on a stationary train. In an ideal scenario of perfectly coordinated timetables, total journey time could fall by roughly 25%.
Combining better timetables with the infrastructure planned up to 2050, the theoretical potential approaches one third. The study does not promise an immediate reduction on every route, but it shows that coordinating connections can be as important as making trains faster.
