In 2003, a prospective study carried out on behalf of the UIC (International Railway Union) was completed. It forecasts passenger traffic in Western Europe for 2010/2020 with additional data for Poland and the Czech Republic. The consultants, INTRAPLAN, IMTrans and INRETS, set about out their investigations as a means of bringing the previous forecast, which was already ten years old, up-to-date. This contribution starts by dealing with the success and sustainability of high-speed rail transport, before going on to present the scenarios adopted for the investigations and to use the results to show that, thanks to high-speed passenger trains, the European railways are going to be in a position to more than double their traffic volumes by the year 2020 compared with the baseline year, 1999.
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