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Starline
A High-Speed
Future for Europe
A 21st Europe blueprint
with Bakken & Bæck
Europe has always been shaped by movement. For centuries, its roads and railways carried traders, thinkers, and dreamers, weaving cultures together and making distances feel smaller. The train once defined this rhythm—powering industry, shaping cities, and embodying the very idea of a connected continent.
But today, Europe’s rail network reflects its political complexity: fragmented, uneven, often slow. High-speed travel has defaulted to air, while rail lags behind—disjointed by national borders, outdated systems, and a lack of cohesion. The result? A Europe that feels less connected than it should.
Starline is a vision to change this. More than a high-speed rail network, it’s a rethink of how design, technology, and culture can create infrastructure that is seamless, sustainable, and exciting. Imagine blue high-speed trains gliding effortlessly across borders, transforming a patchwork of national lines into a single, unified experience.
Railways have never been just about transport. They are lines drawn through history and society. Starline is about redrawing them—not to divide, but to connect. To make a continent feel whole again.
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Railways were always about more than transport.
Today’s Situation:
A Disconnected Europe
Our research and expert insights highlight four key factors shaping Europe’s rail landscape today. These findings summarise our analysis and provide the foundation for understanding why high-speed rail must be reimagined for the century ahead.
01: A Geopolitical Case
Europe’s strength has always been its openness—but seamless movement remains an unfulfilled promise. The Schengen Agreement erased borders on paper, yet our transport infrastructure still reinforces them. Meanwhile, China has built the world’s largest high-speed rail network in just two decades, demonstrating what’s possible with long-term vision.
Europe has success stories—France’s TGV, Spain’s AVE, Germany’s ICE—but they remain national projects rather than a cohesive system. The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) aims to unify infrastructure, but it lacks speed and ambition. A truly integrated rail system is no longer just a matter of convenience; it’s a strategic necessity for Europe’s resilience in the 21st century.
02: Culture in Motion
For generations, railways have shaped how Europeans experience their continent. From the golden age of night trains to today’s 400,000+ Interrail users annually, the desire for open, accessible travel is clear. Yet, despite public demand—cross-border travel remains fragmented, slow, and expensive.
While low-cost airlines have made hopping between capitals easy, they have also eroded the cultural fabric that rail once wove together. A new European rail network must be more than an engineering feat; it must make travel intuitive, affordable, and inspiring—ensuring that the next generation experiences Europe as a truly connected whole.
03: Greener Mobility
Transport is one of Europe’s biggest climate challenges, responsible for 25% of total emissions—and aviation is the fastest-growing contributor. Short-haul flights remain the default for millions, despite high-speed rail emitting 90% less CO₂ per journey. Electrified trains powered by renewables could transform European mobility into a model of sustainability.
Yet, without a unified network, rail struggles to compete. Countries like France and Austria have begun restricting short-haul flights where rail alternatives exist, but real impact requires a continental approach. A bold shift to high-speed rail might be Europe’s best chance to meet its 2050 net-zero goals while ensuring mobility remains both fast and green.
By the numbers
8 billion passengers traveled by high-speed rail in 2023, yet fewer than 9% crossed borders.
424 major cities will be connected to ports, airports, and rail under the EU’s TEN-T plans.
Replacing short-haul flights with high-speed rail could cut emissions by 95%.
In China, each new high-speed rail line contributed up to 7.2% urban GDP growth.
04: An Economic Engine
A strong Europe moves—goods, people, and ideas. Rail freight is four times more efficient than road transport, yet only 18% of goods move by rail today. Meanwhile, a fragmented passenger network limits labour mobility and business growth. A truly integrated high-speed rail system would be an economic catalyst, creating millions of jobs in infrastructure, engineering, and services.
When China expanded its high-speed rail network, cities with HSR connections experienced a 14.2% increase in GDP, and each new HSR line contributed an additional 7.2% to urban GDP growth. A European project of similar scale could drive investment, unlock regional economies, and make the single market feel like a single market—physically, not just economically.
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21st Europe:
Better by Design
Europe has no shortage of rail investment, policies, or ambition. Projects like TEN-T and national high-speed networks are steps in the right direction. But a fundamental issue remains: the lack of design. Not just in the passenger experience—where complex ticketing, inconsistent service, and outdated stations make rail feel fragmented—but in the missed opportunity to make rail a defining feature of Europe itself.
Rail is more than infrastructure—it is how people experience the continent. Yet, unlike Europe’s great public spaces, high-speed rail lacks a unifying vision. Stations feel disconnected, trains vary wildly in design, and the journey itself is rarely considered as part of the experience. Other forms of transport, from Japanese bullet trains to Scandinavian airports, have shown that mobility can be both functional and iconic.
Solving this is not just about more investment. It’s about designing a system that is built for the century ahead.
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At its best, design makes the complex feel simple—and the simple, significant.
Kaave Pour
21st Europe
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Welcome to Starline
Starline is a blueprint for a different kind of future—one where blue high-speed trains glide seamlessly across borders, making travel effortless, sustainable, and deeply connected. Not just a faster way to get from A to B, but a new story of European movement.
Moving Europe by Train
Starline is a blueprint for a new European high-speed rail network—one that connects countries as seamlessly as city metro lines. Built on existing and planned infrastructure, it prioritises speed, sustainability, and simplicity, making high-speed rail the most natural way to move across the continent.
A New Continental Landmark
Starline is more than a transport system—it’s a statement. A landmark of European ambition, it offers a tangible symbol of progress at a time when unity can feel abstract. Its deep blue trains become icons of connection, crossing borders with ease. Just as public spaces and grand cathedrals once defined European identity, Starline gives the continent a new landmark for the 21st century—one that people can see, use, and take pride in.
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Mobility as an experience
Starline is a complete rethink of European travel—where tickets, timetables, stations, and trains work as one seamless system. A single European timetable replaces today’s complexity, making cross-border journeys as simple and joyful. Stations become vibrant public spaces, and the trains themselves are designed for comfort, offering spaces for work, rest, and social connection. With a distinctive identity—from its name to its deep blue trains—Starline transforms infrastructure into experience, making travel across Europe not just faster, but better.
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The Starline Map:
A Connected Europe
Starline expands the TEN-T network into a bold European high-speed rail system. The focus is on linking countries rather than developing domestic rail, which should remain a national responsibility. Every country has at least one station, ensuring broad access, while larger economies and key industrial hubs gain additional connections to strengthen economic and cultural ties.
Though the foundation is built around EU countries, Starline extends beyond—connecting regions that are economically and historically intertwined. Countries like England, Turkey, and Ukraine serve as examples, ensuring a high-speed network that reaches across the entire continent. Rail should not be limited by political borders when Europe’s future depends on deeper connections.
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By the numbers
22,000 km of high-speed rail across Europe.
Up to 80% fewer short-haul flights projected.
39 Starline stations connecting the continent.
Estimated 30% faster than cars and traditional rail.
A More Balanced Continent
For decades, Europe’s high-speed rail has been a story of imbalance. France, Germany, Spain, and the Benelux countries have led the way, building efficient and expansive networks, while Eastern Europe has remained a patchwork of slower connections, outdated infrastructure, and long travel times. The result is not just an inconvenience—it is a structural divide that reinforces economic disparities and limits mobility.
Starline changes this. It puts Eastern Europe on the high-speed map, integrating cities like Kyiv, Bucharest, and Sofia into a seamless continental network. It brings Warsaw and Berlin within easy reach of each other. It makes Belgrade and Budapest part of the same daily rhythm. It creates a new reality in which talent, investment, and ideas can flow across the continent, unhindered by infrastructure gaps. The future of Europe cannot be built on half a continent—it requires full connectivity.
The Importance of Speed
Speed is not just about getting people from A to B—it is what makes high-speed rail a true backbone for European mobility. Starline is designed to operate at 300–400 km/h, ensuring that Europe moves at the pace modern mobility requires. China has built 42,000 kilometres of high-speed rail in just two decades, with trains regularly exceeding 350 km/h. Japan’s Shinkansen has made fast, seamless rail an everyday reality. Europe already has the expertise—Starline is about applying it at scale, across borders, without friction.
At these speeds, Helsinki to Berlin takes just over three hours, turning what was once a full-day journey into an easy transition. Kyiv to Berlin, historically an overnight trip, becomes a predictable, seamless connection. Milan to Munich, a slow and winding route today, transforms into a high-frequency link between major economic centres.
But speed is not just about people. It is just as crucial for goods. Starline integrates freight into its network, allowing high-value, time-sensitive goods—like medical supplies, fresh produce, and critical manufacturing components—to move at the same speed as passengers. A faster Europe means supply chains that are more resilient, reducing reliance on road freight and short-haul flights. Factories can source materials quicker, businesses can operate with greater flexibility, and local producers can reach markets faster.
Even the Starline map reflects this shift. Designed like a metro system, it changes how Europeans perceive their own continent—not as a collection of distant capitals, but as a single, fast-moving network where every connection, whether for people or goods, is within easy reach.
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The Starline Trains:
Moving Through Europe
Trains are among the largest designed objects in daily life. Their presence is undeniable—moving architecture that defines how people experience time, distance, and place. Starline’s design is rooted in clarity. It resists the aesthetic tropes of high-speed rail—overly industrial, excessively futuristic—and instead embraces a simplicity that feels both immediate and enduring.
A New European Icon
Starline is blue, not just in reference to the European flag but as a deliberate act of identity-making. Deep blue stands apart from the metallic anonymity of most trains, offering something instantly recognisable—an object that will become as synonymous with movement in Europe as the red double-decker is with London or the yellow taxi with New York. Europe, despite pioneering high-speed rail, has never had a single train that represents the continent itself. Starline creates that symbol.
The design follows the same logic. No excessive ornamentation, no forced futurism—just a train that looks as purposeful as it moves. The stars along the sides are subtle, a quiet nod to Europe rather than a branding exercise. The result is a train that feels like it belongs—not as a corporate product, but as part of the landscape of daily life.
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Interior: A Train for How We Move Today
Rail travel is one of the few forms of transport where time on board can be put to use—whether for work, rest, or simply looking out the window. Starline’s interior is designed around this principle, offering different spaces for different needs without the rigid hierarchy of traditional first- and second-class divisions.
There are quiet zones for focus, open areas for work and conversation, and family-friendly sections that make long journeys easier with children. Seating is designed for comfort over distance, ensuring that even the longest trips feel natural rather than exhausting. Café areas are integrated into the design, offering a place to pause without feeling disconnected from the journey.
Starline is also built for more than just passengers. With dedicated cargo capacity, it ensures that time-sensitive goods move as efficiently as people, reducing the need for short-haul freight flights and overburdened road networks.
This is not luxury—it is rail designed for the way people actually travel today. A system that acknowledges that movement isn’t just about getting somewhere, but about the experience along the way.
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The Starline Stations:
New National Landmarks
Train stations have long been more than points of departure and arrival—they are markers of progress, statements of intent, and some of the most memorable public spaces a city can offer. Yet, across much of Europe, central stations are struggling under the weight of outdated infrastructure, congested networks, and a limited capacity to evolve. Starline offers an entirely new approach: instead of retrofitting the past, it proposes a network of new stations, built just outside major cities to integrate seamlessly with existing transport systems while allowing for a scale and ambition that modern infrastructure demands.
These will not be mere transport hubs. Each station will serve as a national landmark, designed by the most visionary architects and designers of its respective country. This is an opportunity for Europe to demonstrate that it is not just preserving its past but actively shaping its future. Whether it is a playfully designed terminal in Copenhagen, a sculptural station in Athens, or a grand public forum in Warsaw, each station will embody the distinct character of its city while collectively forming a network that symbolises where Europe is heading.
Cultural Hubs
The best stations are more than places to catch a train—they are places where people gather, where culture thrives, where cities express themselves. Starline stations will be active public spaces, not just transit points, incorporating cultural institutions, public squares, and venues that make them destinations in their own right.
Rather than simply mirroring airports, Starline stations will take the idea of a multi-use hub further. Beyond restaurants, shopping, and well-designed waiting areas, they could host concert halls, museums, sports venues, and event spaces, leveraging their function as pan-European access points. This turns stations into gathering places for major cultural and sporting events—allowing Europeans to reach exhibitions, performances, or tournaments with the ease of a high-speed commute.
By placing these stations just outside city centres, they remain highly accessible while avoiding the immense disruption that expanding central stations would create. This approach also spreads economic activity beyond traditional urban cores, supporting new areas of development while keeping connectivity with existing public transport networks intact.
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Fulfillment Hubs
Passenger movement is only one part of the equation—Starline stations will also act as fulfillment hubs, transforming the way goods are transported across Europe. Today, European businesses struggle with fractured logistics, limited rail freight infrastructure, and an overreliance on road transport and short-haul flights. Starline addresses this by embedding freight capabilities directly into its stations, ensuring that high-speed rail is as effective for goods as it is for people.
By integrating dedicated freight corridors, Starline enables goods to move efficiently across borders without the delays and costs of conventional shipping. This makes it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to participate in the European single market, ensuring that high-speed rail strengthens economic ties as much as cultural ones.
A Europe that moves better is a Europe that trades better. With Starline, stations become more than places of transit—they become gateways for commerce, creativity, and connection.
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The Starline Services:
A Mobility Platform
For Starline to function as more than just a network of tracks and trains, it requires a digital infrastructure as advanced as its physical one. High-speed rail only reaches its full potential when supported by a system that ensures seamless ticketing, real-time coordination, and the efficient movement of both people and goods. An intelligent platform should sit at the core of Starline, integrating data, automation, and predictive capabilities to keep the system running efficiently at scale.
This platform should be open and adaptable, allowing for continuous optimisation. Just as modern air travel operates on global booking and logistics standards, Starline should be built to interact with multiple providers and services across Europe. Whether for ticketing, freight tracking, or energy management, the system must evolve alongside the continent’s technological landscape—anticipating future needs rather than reacting to them.
A Unified Ticketing System
Europe’s rail system today remains fragmented, with national operators running on separate booking platforms, making cross-border travel unnecessarily complex. A high-speed rail network on this scale requires a unified ticketing experience, where searching, comparing, and booking a trip is as seamless as buying a flight.
Starline should operate on an open ticketing platform, allowing multiple travel providers, digital services, and third-party platforms to integrate directly. This would create a competitive, flexible ecosystem where passengers could book directly through Starline or through existing travel platforms, much like airline tickets are distributed today. Crucially, this is not about centralising sales under a single operator but about standardising access to rail travel across Europe, removing the friction that currently drives passengers to other modes of transport.
A Solid Security System
Rail security today varies widely across Europe, from minimal checks to full-scale airport-style screening, often creating inconsistent and inefficient passenger experiences. Starline should introduce AI-driven, sensor-based security that enables real-time monitoring of passenger flows without introducing bottlenecks.
Instead of static checkpoints, an intelligent security system would adapt dynamically—using biometric verification, automated threat detection, and network-wide coordination to identify risks without requiring every passenger to stop and queue. This approach mirrors how next-generation airports are deploying continuous security layers, ensuring safety without compromising efficiency.
A system of this scale must also account for cyber threats. Starline’s digital platform should be built on secure, decentralised infrastructure, protecting both passenger data and operational integrity from emerging risks in cybersecurity.
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A Fully Renewable Network
Starline’s energy system should be designed not just for efficiency but for long-term energy independence. The network must be powered by renewable sources, integrating solar, wind, and battery storage into its stations and operational infrastructure.
Rather than relying entirely on national grids, Starline should incorporate smart energy management—storing excess power during low demand and optimising consumption based on real-time network activity. This approach would reduce operating costs, increase resilience against energy shortages, and set a new benchmark for sustainable transport infrastructure.
Real-Time Information
For Starline to function as a true alternative to air and road transport, it must provide real-time, transparent information across all aspects of the system. Passengers should be able to see live train status, estimated arrival times, and platform details with precision—removing uncertainty and improving reliability.
For freight, this level of tracking is just as crucial. Businesses should be able to monitor cargo movement with the same accuracy as air freight tracking, ensuring seamless cross-border logistics. A network-wide automated scheduling and routing system would allow trains to be adjusted dynamically, improving capacity utilisation and reducing delays across the entire system.
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The Starline Setup:
Potential Scenarios
For Starline to become reality, it must be efficiently operated, transparently governed, and sustainably funded. As a pan-European system, it requires central coordination for trains, passenger experience, and technology while allowing national rail operators to run routes under a franchise model.
Operating Model
Starline should be structured as a publicly funded, privately operated system, designed to maximise efficiency while ensuring strong public oversight.
A Standardised Experience: The trains, stations, branding, and digital services should be unified across the network. Whether boarding in Madrid or Munich, passengers should have a consistent, predictable experience, with seamless ticketing, intuitive way finding, and interoperable services.
A Franchise-Based Operational Model: Starline could be run by approved national rail companies, each responsible for specific routes under a common framework. This model, similar to how major airline alliances operate, would allow existing operators to leverage their expertise while ensuring Starline functions as a singular system.
Cross-Border Workforce & Standards: To function as a European system, Starline would require harmonised labour agreements, technical standards, and safety regulations. This means train operators, maintenance crews, and station staff would be trained under a shared European framework, ensuring operational consistency regardless of where they work.
By integrating standardisation at the passenger level with flexibility at the operational level, Starline can achieve the efficiency of a metro, the reliability of a national rail system, and the international reach of an airline network.
Governance Model
A network of this scale requires a centralised European governance. Starline should be overseen by a new European Rail Authority (ERA)—a body within the EU framework responsible for ensuring the system’s coordination, interoperability, and long-term expansion.
Starline should operate under a single set of technical, safety, and labour regulations, ensuring that cross-border travel is as seamless as domestic rail.
While governed through the EU, non-EU nations participating should have advisory roles, similar to existing European transport initiatives.
While the initial network is defined, an independent expansion board within the ERA should continuously evaluate future routes, station development, and infrastructure investments.
By embedding Starline into Europe’s institutional and legal framework, the network becomes more than a transport system—it becomes a permanent part of the continent’s infrastructure strategy, ensuring that its governance is as future-proof as its technology.
Funding Model
Large-scale infrastructure requires long-term investment. Starline should be positioned as a strategic European project, aligning with the Draghi Report’s call for investment in the continent’s competitiveness and resilience. This is not just about rail—it is about ensuring Europe has the infrastructure to support economic growth, climate goals, and industrial competitiveness.
Starline should be financed through a combination of EU infrastructure budgets, European Investment Bank (EIB) funding, and long-term EU bonds—ensuring that the network is built as a shared European asset, not a patchwork of national investments.
While EU funds should cover the backbone of the network, national governments should co-finance their respective stations and regional connections. The private sector can play a role in station development, commercial services, and logistics operations.
Ticket prices should be significantly lower than short-haul flights and existing rail services to encourage mass adoption. Ultimately, the goal is not to maximise profit but to make high-speed rail the default choice for European travel.
Starline’s dedicated freight network would provide a steady revenue stream, allowing companies to pay for priority access to logistics corridors. This not only improves supply chain efficiency but helps subsidise passenger fares, ensuring long-term viability.
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What's Next?
Starline is an invitation to rethink how Europe moves. This blueprint is not just a proposal for high-speed rail—it’s meant to ignite conversation, a starting point for reimagining connectivity across the continent. Now, we begin building the network to push for real change, bringing together policymakers, designers, and industry leaders to turn vision into action.
But just as much as it is about infrastructure, Starline is about ideas. 21st Europe exists to spark these discussions, and anyone who shares this ambition can join as a member—to contribute, debate, and help shape the future of mobility in Europe.
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The Future Is Not A Destination, It’s A Direction.
Credits
21st Europe
The Starline Blueprint—its vision, research, and orchestration—has been developed by 21st Europe. A new think tank, working with Europe's brightest minds to design blueprints that spark conversations and inspire optimism for the continent's next chapter.
Bakken & Bæck
The blueprint has been designed in collaboration with Bakken & Bæck, a technology-driven design studio specialising in digital products, brand identity, and future-focused innovation. With offices in Oslo, Amsterdam, Bonn, London, and Barcelona, they partnered with Culte Commun in Paris for the designs.
Credits
The Starline Blueprint has been informed by expert insights in mobility, infrastructure, and European policy, ensuring it is a viable framework, not just a vision. Contributors include Kara Pecknold (Frog), Jon Worth (EU rail policy), TC Chew (Arup), Hannah Gutkauf (Manyone), Kristoffer Tjalve, and Milan Sverepa (Inclusive Europe).