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L1mburg
NOS News•today, 2:44 PM
There will be no intercity services between Eindhoven and the German city of Aachen for the time being. Even the plan to only run a fast train back and forth in the morning before 8 a.m. and in the evening after 8 p.m. has been scrapped. For the time being, train passengers in Heerlen have to transfer to a shuttle bus that takes more than half an hour to Aachen, twenty kilometers away.
“The aim was for the fast train to start running in December. It has recently become apparent that this is no longer feasible,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management told L1 News.
Work on a fast connection between Eindhoven and Aachen has been underway since 2003. The last part of the route, between Heerlen and Aachen, has now (largely) been doubled and electrified.
The cities of Eindhoven, Heerlen and Aachen emphasize the importance of a fast connection. The Eindhoven University of Technology and the RWTH in Aachen are seen as strongholds of innovation and technical development. A good train connection can give mutual (economic) contacts and student traffic a significant boost, according to the province of Limburg.
From Eindhoven to Aachen with the NS now takes just over an hour and a half. If the intercity can continue, the time saving is just under half an hour.
Additional platforms
It should be noted that an intercity connection between Eindhoven and the German growth metropolis requires enormous investments in and around Eindhoven station. This includes additional platforms and a free crossing. Only after the year 2030 will there be money to realize this plan (possibly).
Furthermore, rail manager ProRail must conduct a study into the state of the infrastructure across the border. In addition, there is hassle between the transport companies NS and Arriva. The NS now runs between Eindhoven and Heerlen. Arriva runs between Heerlen and Aachen.
The NS itself sees little added value in an intercity that continues to Aachen. “With the fast transfer at Heerlen station, we serve both domestic travelers and travelers traveling to and from Aachen and all our travelers have a good connection,” the NS said in November 2019.
The province does not agree with this and is considering an international Arriva intercity between Eindhoven and Aachen, which also stops in Weert, Roermond, Sittard and Heerlen. Obviously that is not a plan. That Arriva train would become a direct competitor for NS. Moreover, it costs almost four million euros extra per year, the ministry calculated.
Careful start
Because the problems are unlikely to be solved for the time being, the province recently came up with a plan to “carefully make a start” with a fast connection, starting from the new timetable in December 2024.
At quiet times, i.e. before the morning rush hour, after the evening rush hour and during the weekends, a number of intercity trains should run to and from Aachen. But for the time being, that plan also appears to be unfeasible, according to the ministry, because it is too complicated.
However, an alternative will soon be available: from June 9, the so-called Three-Country Train will run from Liège via Maastricht and Heerlen to Aachen and vice versa. The direct train connection between the three countries should have been operational in December, but this was not achieved for technical reasons.
The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany use different safety systems on the railways, which are not easy to coordinate. With Arriva’s Three-Country Train, travelers between Aachen and Liège no longer have to change trains in Maastricht.
