title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: British Sign Language, often abbreviated to BSL, is the language of 125,000 Deaf adults, about 0.3% of the total population of the United Kingdom. It is not exclusively the language of Deaf people; many relatives of Deaf people and others can communicate in it fluently. Recognised to be a language by the UK Government on 18 March 2003, BSL has the highest number of monolingual users of any indigenous minority language in the UK.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Abilities in the regional languages of the UK (other than Cornish) for those aged three and above were recorded in the UK census 2011 as follows.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Certain nations and regions of the UK have frameworks for the promotion of their autochthonous languages.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of:


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (which is not legally enforceable, but which requires states to adopt appropriate legal provision for the use of regional and minority languages) the UK government has committed itself to the recognition of certain regional languages and the promotion of certain linguistic traditions. The UK has ratified for the higher level of protection (Section III) provided for by the Charter in respect of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish. Cornish, Scots in Scotland and Northern Ireland (in the latter territory officially known as Ulster Scots or Ullans, but in the speech of users simply as Scottish or Scots) are protected by the lower level only (Section II). The UK government has also recognised British Sign Language as a language in its own right of the United Kingdom.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: A number of bodies have been established to oversee the promotion of the regional languages: in Scotland, Bòrd na Gàidhlig oversees Scottish Gaelic. Foras na Gaeilge has an all-Ireland remit as a cross-border language body, and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch is intended to fulfil a similar function for Ulster Scots, although hitherto it has mainly concerned itself with culture. In Wales, the Welsh Language Commissioner (Comisiynydd y Gymraeg) is an independent body established to promote and facilitate use of the Welsh language, mainly by imposing Welsh language standards on organisations. The Cornish Language Partnership is a body that represents the major Cornish language and cultural groups and local government's language needs. It receives funding from the UK government and the European Union, and is the regulator of the language's Standard Written Form, agreed in 2008.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing "languages" from "dialects", although a number of paradigms exist, which give sometimes contradictory results. The distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Scottish Gaelic and Irish are generally viewed as being languages in their own right rather than dialects of a single tongue, but they are sometimes mutually intelligible to a limited degree – especially between southern dialects of Scottish and northern dialects of Irish (programmes in these two forms of Gaelic are broadcast respectively on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta), but the relationship between Scots and English is less clear, since there is usually partial mutual intelligibility.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Since there is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between contemporary speakers of Scots in Scotland and in Ulster (Ulster Scots), and a common written form was current well into the 20th century, the two varieties have usually been considered as dialects of a single tongue rather than languages in their own right; the written forms have diverged in the 21st century. The government of the United Kingdom "recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language". Whether this implies recognition of one regional or minority language or two is a question of interpretation. Ulster Scots is defined in legislation (The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999) as: "the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland".


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: While in continental Europe closely related languages and dialects may get official recognition and support, in the UK there is a tendency to view closely related vernaculars as a single language. Even British Sign Language is mistakenly thought of as a form of 'English' by some, rather than as a language in its own right, with a distinct grammar and vocabulary. The boundaries are not always clear cut, which makes it hard to estimate numbers of speakers.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: In Northern Ireland, the use of Irish and Ulster Scots is sometimes viewed as politically loaded, despite both having been used by all communities in the past. According to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 1999, the ratio of Unionist to Nationalist users of Ulster Scots is 2:1. About 1% of Catholics claim to speak it, while 2% of Protestants claim to speak it. The disparity in the ratios as determined by political and faith community, despite the very large overlap between the two, reflects the very low numbers of respondents. Across the two communities 0% speak it as their main language at home. A 2:1 ratio would not differ markedly from that among the general population in those areas of Northern Ireland where Scots is spoken.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Often the use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland has met with the considerable suspicion of Unionists, who have associated it with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland, and more recently, with the republican movement in Northern Ireland itself. Catholic areas of Belfast have street signs in Irish similar to those in the Republic. Approximately 14% of the population speak Irish, however only 1% speak it as their main language at home. Under the St Andrews Agreement, the British government committed itself to introducing an Irish Language Act, and it was hoped that a consultation period ending on 2 March 2007 could see Irish becoming an official language, having equal validity with English, recognised as an indigenous language, or aspire to become an official language in the future. However, with the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007, responsibility for this was passed to the Assembly, and the commitment was promptly broken. In October 2007, the then Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Edwin Poots MLA, announced to the assembly that no Irish Language Act would be brought forward. As of April 2016, no Irish Language Act applying to Northern Ireland has been passed, and none is currently planned.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Some resent Scottish Gaelic being promoted in the Lowlands. Gaelic place names are relatively rare in the extreme south-east (that part of Scotland which had previously been under Northumbrian rule) and the extreme north-east (part of Caithness, where Norse was previously spoken).


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Two areas with mostly Norse-derived placenames (and some Pictish), the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) were ceded to Scotland in lieu of an unpaid dowry in 1472, and never spoke Gaelic; its traditional vernacular Norn, a derivative of Old Norse mutually intelligible with Icelandic and Faroese, died out in the 18th century after large-scale immigration by Lowland Scots speakers. To this day, many Shetlanders and Orcadians maintain a separate identity, albeit through the Shetland and Orcadian dialects of Lowland Scots, rather than their former tongue. Norn was also spoken at one point in Caithness, apparently dying out much earlier than Shetland and Orkney. However, the Norse speaking population were entirely assimilated by the Gaelic speaking population in the Western Isles; to what degree this happened in Caithness is a matter of controversy, although Gaelic was spoken in parts of the county until the 20th century.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Scots within Scotland and the regional varieties of English within England receive little or no official recognition. The dialects of northern England share some features with Scots that those of southern England do not. The regional dialects of England were once extremely varied, as is recorded in Joseph Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary" and the Survey of English Dialects, but they have died out over time so that regional differences are now largely in pronunciation rather than in grammar or vocabulary.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Public funding of minority languages continues to produce mixed reactions, and there is sometimes resistance to their teaching in schools. Partly as a result, proficiency in languages other than "Standard" English can vary widely.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Communities migrating to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's school children.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Many Black Britons speak English as their first language. Their ancestors mostly came from the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, and generally also spoke English-based creole languages, hence there are significant numbers of Caribbean creole speakers (see below for Ethnologue figures). A large proportion of the Black British population, especially African-born immigrants speak French as a first or second language.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: British Asians speak dozens of different languages, and it is difficult to determine how many people speak each language alongside English. The largest subgroup of British Asians are those of Punjabi origin (representing approximately two thirds of direct migrants from South Asia to the UK), from both India and Pakistan, they number over 2 million in the UK and are the largest Punjabi community outside of Indo subcontinent. The Punjabi language, with its dialects, is currently the third most spoken language in the United Kingdom.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Among British Pakistanis, Pahari-Pothwari (and particularly "Mirpuri") is the most spoken language. Since it is a spoken language lacking a standardised form, Standard Punjabi (Majhi) and Urdu is also used by the community in the media and literature. The Punjabi language movement considers it to be a dialect of Punjabi. There have been efforts by numerous initiatives to document and gain recognition for the language, particularly in wake of the 2021 United Kingdom census. Institutions such as the National Health Service (NHS) have started to provide Pothwari translation services throughout the country.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Sylheti is the most spoken language (considered also as a Bengali dialect) among British Bangladeshis, with around 400,000 speakers. Standard Bengali is spoken by a minority of British Bangladeshis and majority of West Bengalis. The Standardised variant of Bengali is used by the community as a whole particularly in media. Sylheti had been recognised as part of the list of native languages spoken by students in British schools, and some institutions such as the National Health Service (NHS) provide Sylheti translation services.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: According to the 2021 census, English or Welsh was the main language of 91.1% of the residents of England and Wales. Among other languages, the most common were as follows.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Throughout the UK, many citizens can speak, or at least understand (to a degree where they could have a conversation with someone who speaks that language), a second or even a third language from secondary school education, primary school education or from private classes. 23% of the UK population can speak/understand French, 9% can speak/understand German and 8% can speak/understand Spanish.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: 38% of UK citizens report that they can speak (well enough to have a conversation) at least one language other than their mother tongue, 18% at least two languages and 6% at least three languages. 62% of UK citizens cannot speak any second language. These figures include those who describe their level of ability in the second language as "basic". Due to the dominance of modern English in media and business, English speakers have little exposure to foreign languages and media.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Language teaching is compulsory in all English schools from the ages of 5 or 7. Modern and ancient languages, such as French, German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Urdu, Mandarin, Russian, Bengali, Hebrew, and Arabic, are studied. Language teaching is compulsory from the ages of 11 or 12 in Scotland and Wales.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Norman French is still used in the Houses of Parliament for certain official business between the clerks of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and on other official occasions such as the dissolution of Parliament.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Latin is also used to a limited degree in certain official mottoes, for example "Nemo me impune lacessit", legal terminology ("habeas corpus"), and various ceremonial contexts. Latin abbreviations can also be seen on British coins. The use of Latin has declined greatly in recent years. However, the Catholic Church retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts. Latin remains the language of the Roman Rite, and the Tridentine Mass is celebrated in Latin. Although the Mass of Paul VI is usually celebrated in English, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of the Holy See, the primary language of its public journal, the "Acta Apostolicae Sedis", and the working language of the Roman Rota.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: At one time, Latin and Greek were commonly taught in British schools (and were required for entrance to the ancient universities until 1919, for Greek, and the 1960s, for Latin), and A-Levels and Highers are still available in both subjects.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Cornish became extinct as a first language in the late 18th century, ceasing to have any fully competent speakers by 1800. Its cultural legacy has continued within Cornwall.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: There are small numbers of second-language speakers of revived varieties of Cornish, and these appear in the table of living languages in this article. Many people therefore regard the Cornish language not as "extinct" but as "critically endangered" or by other similar terms.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: A North Germanic once spoken in the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and Caithness. It is likely that the language was dying out in the late 18th century, with the reports putting the last Norn speakers in the 19th century. Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst, who died about 1850, has been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language. The remote islands of Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in Shetland, where there were people "who could repeat sentences in Norn, probably passages from folk songs or poems, as late as 1893". Fragments of vocabulary survived the death of the main language and remain to this day, mainly in place-names and terms referring to plants, animals, weather, mood, and fishing vocabulary.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Unrelated to both the Banzsl British Sign Language and Northern Irish SL and the Francosign Irish SL, the sign language spoken in Kent was a unique village sign language that went to sleep and was superseded by BSL in the 17th century. There are fairly weak rumours that Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (one of ASL's substrate languages) descended through Kentish signers, though proper evidence has not yet been substantiated.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Pictish was probably a Brittonic language, or dialect, spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages, which became extinct c.900 AD. There is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts. Such evidence, however, points to the language being closely related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England and Wales. A minority view held by a few scholars claims that Pictish was at least partially non-Indo-European or that a non-Indo-European and Brittonic language coexisted.


title: Languages of the United Kingdom

text: Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the "Hen Ogledd" or "Old North" in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. Place name evidence suggests Cumbric speakers may have carried it into other parts of northern England as migrants from its core area further north. It may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales. Most linguists think that it became extinct in the 12th century, after the incorporation of the semi-independent Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: High-speed rail (HSR) has developed in Europe as an increasingly popular and efficient means of transport. The first high-speed rail lines on the continent, built in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, improved travel times on intra-national corridors. Since then, several countries have built extensive high-speed networks, and there are now several cross-border high-speed rail links. Railway operators frequently run international services, and tracks are continuously being built and upgraded to international standards on the emerging European high-speed rail network.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In 2007, a consortium of European Railway operators, Railteam, emerged to co-ordinate and boost cross-border high-speed rail travel. Developing a Trans-European high-speed rail network is a stated goal of the European Union, and most cross-border railway lines receive EU funding. Several countries — France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia and the United Kingdom — are connected to a cross-border high-speed railway network.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: More are expected to be connected in the coming years as Europe invests heavily in tunnels, bridges and other infrastructure and development projects across the continent, many of which are under construction now. Alstom was the first manufacturer to design and deliver a high speed train or HS-Train, which ended up in service with TGV in France.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Currently, there are a number of manufacturers designing and building HSR in Europe, with criss-crossed alliances and partnerships, including Alstom, Bombardier (since 2021 owned by Alstom), Hitachi, Siemens, and Talgo.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The first high-speed rail lines and services were built in the 1980s and 1990s as national projects. Countries sought to increase passenger capacity and decrease journey times on inter-city routes within their borders. In the beginning, lines were built through national funding programs and services were operated by national operators.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: France was the first country to introduce high-speed rail in Europe when the LGV Sud-Est from Paris to Lyon opened in 1981 and TGV started passenger service. Since then, France has continued to build an extensive network, with lines extending in every direction from Paris. France has the second largest high-speed network in Europe, with of operative HSR lines in June 2021, only behind Spain's .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The TGV network gradually spread out to other cities, and into other countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK. Due to the early adoption of high-speed rail and the important location of France (between the Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles and Central Europe), most other dedicated high-speed rail lines in Europe have been built to the same speed, voltage and signaling standards. The most obvious exception is the high-speed lines in Germany, which are built to existing German railway standards. Also, many high-speed services, including TGV and ICE utilize existing rail lines in addition to those designed for high-speed rail. For that reason, and due to differing national standards, trains that cross national boundaries need to have special characteristics, such as the ability to handle different power supplies and signalling systems. This means that not all TGVs are the same, and there are loading gauge and signalling considerations.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Britain has a history of high-speed rail, starting with early high-speed steam systems: examples of engines are GWR 3700 Class 3440 City of Truro and the steam-record holder LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard. Later, high-speed diesel and electric services were introduced, using upgraded main lines, mainly the Great Western Main Line (GWML) and East Coast Main Line.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The InterCity 125, otherwise known as the "High-Speed Train" (HST), was launched in 1976 with a service speed of and provided the first high-speed rail services in Britain. The HST was diesel-powered, and the GWML was the first to be modified for the new service. Because the GWML had been built mostly straight, often with four tracks and with a distance of between distant signal and main signal, it allowed trains to run at with relatively moderate infrastructure investments, compared to other countries in Europe. The Intercity 125 had proven the economic case for high-speed rail, and British Rail was keen to explore further advances.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In the 1970s, British Rail began to explore new technologies for high-speed passenger rail services in the UK. While the Japanese and French railway authorities had decided to build completely new tracks for their respective Shinkansen and TGV high-speed rail systems, British Rail opted instead to develop a train capable of running on existing rail infrastructure: the Advanced Passenger Train (APT), with a top speed of . An experimental version, the APT-E, was tested between 1972 and 1976. It was equipped with a tilting mechanism which allowed the train to tilt into bends to reduce cornering forces on passengers, and was powered by gas turbines (the first to be used on British Rail since the Great Western Railway). The line had used Swiss-built Brown-Boveri and British-built Metropolitan-Vickers locomotives (18000 and 18100) in the early 1950s. The 1970s oil crisis prompted a rethink in the choice of motive power (as with the prototype TGV in France), and British Rail later opted for traditional electric overhead lines when the pre-production and production APTs were brought into service in 1980–86.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Initial experience with the Advanced Passenger Trains was pretty good. They had a high power-to-weight ratio to enable rapid acceleration; the prototype set record speeds on the Great Western Main Line and the Midland Main Line, and the production versions vastly reduced journey times on the WCML. The APT was, however, beset with technical problems; financial constraints and negative media coverage eventually caused the project to be cancelled.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Trains currently travel at on five lines (across at least one section): the East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Midland Main Line, parts of the Cross Country Route, and the West Coast Main Line.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Like Finnish and Russian counterparts, the strongest reasons for new high-speed lines are to relieve congestion on the existing network and create extra capacity.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In order to carry passengers to destinations beyond the core routes to Paris and Brussels, new Class 374 trains, also referred to as the Eurostar e320, were introduced in November 2015. A Class 374 train has 900 seats, roughly equivalent to six Airbus A320s or Boeing 737s (the aircraft typically used by low-cost airlines).


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Construction on first German high-speed lines began shortly after that of the French LGVs. Legal battles caused significant delays, so that the InterCityExpress (ICE) trains were deployed ten years after the TGV network was established. The ICE network is more tightly integrated with pre-existing lines and trains as a result of the different settlement structure in Germany, with a population more numerous by a third than that of France, on a territory smaller by a third, resulting in more than twice the population density of France. ICE trains reached destinations in Austria and Switzerland soon after they entered service, taking advantage of the same voltage used in these countries. Starting in 2000, multisystem third-generation ICE trains entered the Netherlands and Belgium. The third generation of the ICE reached a speed of during trial runs in accordance with European rules requiring maximum speed +10% in trial runs, and is certified for in regular service.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In the south-west, a new line between Offenburg and Basel is planned to allow speeds of , and a new line between Frankfurt and Mannheim for speeds of is in advanced planning stages. In the east, a long line between Nuremberg and Leipzig opened in December 2017 for speeds of up to . Together with the fast lines from Berlin to Leipzig and from Nuremberg to Munich, which were completed in 2006, it allows journey times of about four hours from Berlin in the north to Munich in the south, compared to nearly eight hours for the same distance a few years ago.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The earliest high-speed rail line built in Europe was the Italian "Direttissima", the Florence–Rome high-speed railway in 1978, which used FS Class E444 3 kV DC locomotives. Italy pioneered the use of the "Pendolino" tilting train technology. The Italian government constructor Treno Alta Velocità has been adding to the high-speed network in Italy, with some lines already opened. The Italian operator NTV is the first open access high-speed rail operator in Europe, since 2011, using AGV ETR 575 multiple units.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In March 2011, a contract for the second phase of construction on the Milan–Verona high-speed line was signed. This section will be long. Construction originally to be completed by 2015, it is open to Brescia since late 2016.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Italian high-speed railway network consists of of lines, which allow speeds of up to . The safety system adopted for the network is the ERMTS/ETCS II, the state-of-the-art in railway signalling and safety. The power supply follows the European standard of 25 kV AC 50 Hz mono-phase current. The Direttissima segment is still supplied with 3 kV DC current, but it is planned that this will be conformed to the rest of the network.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: With the entering into service of the ETR1000 train-sets, which have a designed top speed of and a designed commercial speed of , the rail network speeds where thought to be upgraded to safely allow trains to run at such speeds. After it entered in service in 2015, the Frecciarossa 1000 underwent several speed tests along the Turin-Milan route, reaching the Italian rail speed record of on 26 February 2016. On 28 May 2018, the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and the ANSF announced that no further tests will be carried out, as issues of ballast being suctioned by the train emerged at those speeds, and that the speed limit would be maintained at , which is the speed for which it is currently certified.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The increasing success of Italy's high-speed rail networks since 2008 has been cited as one of the main reasons that the flag carrier airline Alitalia, which focused on domestic flights, went bankrupt and ceased operations in October 2021 as high-speed train travel became faster, cheaper and more efficient.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In 1978, the Spanish manufacturer Talgo registered the world speed record for diesel-powered trains at 230 km/h with a Talgo 4. The same company had reached successive records at in 1942 with a Talgo 1, in 1964 with a Talgo 3, and then reached on a static test bench in 1990 with a Talgo 350 tilting train. Following these technical benchmarks, maximum commercial speeds in the Spanish networks were set at in 1950, in 1986, and in 1989.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) high-speed rail service in Spain has been operating since 1992, when the Madrid–Seville route started running, at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph). Ten other lines have been opened since, including the long Madrid–Barcelona line. By December 2021 the total length of the ADIF-maintained network was , making it the longest in Europe, and the second longest in the world after mainland China's.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The ambitious AVE construction programme aims to connect with high-speed trains almost all provincial capitals to Madrid in less than 3 hours and to Barcelona within 6 hours. With an initial deadline set for 2020, the programme was slowed down by the financial crisis: the two main lines still under construction, the Mediterranean Corridor and the Madrid–Extremadura line (which would be part of the Madrid-Lisbon link), are yet to be completed.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Spanish and Portuguese high-speed lines are being built to European standard track gauge (UIC) of and electrified with 25 kV at 50 Hz from overhead wire. The first HSL from Madrid to Seville is equipped with the LZB train control system, and later lines with ETCS.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Elsewhere in Europe, the success of high-speed services has been due in part to interoperability with existing normal rail lines. Interoperability between the new AVE lines and the older Iberian gauge network presents additional challenges. Both Talgo and CAF supply trains with variable gauge wheels operated by automatic gauge-changer equipment which the trains pass through without stopping (Alvias). Some lines are being constructed as dual gauge to allow trains with Iberian and UIC gauge to run on the same tracks. Other lines have been re-equipped with sleepers for both Iberian and UIC gauge, such that the track can be converted from Iberian to UIC gauge at a later time without changing the sleepers.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The first AVE trains to link up with the French standard gauge network began running in December 2013, when direct high-speed rail services between Spain and France were launched for the first time. This connection between the two countries was made possible by the construction of the Perpignan–Barcelona high-speed rail line (a follow-up of the Madrid-Barcelona line), completed in January 2013, and its international section Perpignan-Figueres, which opened in December 2010 and includes a new tunnel under the Pyrenees. Another high-speed rail link connecting the two countries at Irun/Hendaye is also planned.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The total length of lines is as of 2021, with long-term plans to expand it up to . Several new high-speed lines are under construction with a design speed of , and several old lines are being upgraded to allow passenger trains to operate at .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Three companies have built or will build trains for the Spanish high-speed railway network: Spanish Talgo, French Alstom and German Siemens AG. Bombardier Transportation is a partner in both the Talgo-led and the Siemens-led consortium. France will eventually build 25 kV TGV lines all the way to the Spanish border (there is now a gap between Nîmes and Perpignan), but multi-voltage trains will still be needed, as trains travelling to Paris need to travel the last few kilometres on 1.5 kV lines. To this end, RENFE decided to convert 10 existing AVE S100 trains to operate at this voltage (as well as the French signalling systems), which will cost €30,000,000 instead of the previously expected €270,000,000 for new trains.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The network eventually opened to operators other than RENFE, and the SNCF-owned low-cost brand Ouigo España began to serve the Madrid–Barcelona route on 10 May 2021. To complement their higher-end AVE trains, RENFE launched a no-frills service called Avlo on 23 June 2021. Iryo, operated by the ILSA joint venture between Air Nostrum and Trenitalia, began operation in late 2022, making Spain the first country in Europe with three competing operators of high-speed trains.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Trans-European high-speed rail network is one of a number of the European Union's Trans-European transport networks. It was defined by the Council Directive 96/48/EC of 23 July 1996.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The aim of this EU Directive is to achieve the interoperability of the European high-speed train network at the various stages of its design, construction and operation.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The network is defined as a system consisting of a set of infrastructures, fixed installations, logistic equipment and rolling stock.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: On 5 June 2010, the European Commissioner for Transport signed a Memorandum of Understanding with France and Spain concerning a new high-speed rail line across the Pyrenees to become the first link between the high-speed lines of the two countries. Furthermore, high-speed lines between Helsinki and Berlin (Rail Baltica), and between Lyon and Budapest, were promoted.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Belgium's rail network is served by four high-speed train operators: Thalys, Eurostar, ICE and TGV trains. All of them serve Brussels South station, Belgium's largest railway station. Thalys trains, which are a variant of the French TGV, operate between Belgium, Germany (Dortmund), the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and France (Paris). Since 2007, Eurostar has connected Brussels to London St Pancras, before which, trains connected to London Waterloo. The German ICE operates between Brussels, Liège and Frankfurt.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The HSL 1 is a Belgian high-speed railway line which connects Brussels with the French border. long ( dedicated high-speed tracks, modernised lines), it began service on 14 December 1997. The line has appreciably shortened rail journeys, the journey from Paris to Brussels now taking 1:22. In combination with the LGV Nord, it has also affected international journeys to France and London, ensuring high-speed through-running by Eurostar, TGV, Thalys PBA and Thalys PBKA trainsets. The total construction cost was €1.42 billion.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The HSL 2 is a Belgian high-speed rail line between Brussels and Liège, long (} dedicated high-speed tracks between Leuven and Ans, modernised lines between Brussels and Leuven and between Ans and Liège) it began service on 15 December 2002. Its extension to the German border (the HSL 3) is now in use, the combined high-speed line greatly accelerates journeys between Brussels, Paris and Germany. HSL 2 is used by Thalys and ICE trains as well as fast internal InterCity services.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The HSL 3 is a Belgian high-speed railway line which connects Liège to the German border. long ( dedicated high-speed tracks, 14 km modernised lines), it began service on 13 December 2009. HSL 3 is used by international Thalys and ICE trains only, as opposed to HSL 2 which is also used for fast internal InterCity services.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The HSL 4 is a Belgian high-speed railway line which connects Brussels to the Dutch border. long ( dedicated high-speed tracks, modernised lines). HSL 4 is used by Thalys trains since 13 December 2009 and it will be used starting 2010 by fast internal InterCity trains. Between Brussels and Antwerp (), trains travel at on the upgraded existing line (with the exception of a few segments where a speed limit of is imposed). At the E19/A12 motorway junction, trains leave the regular line to run on new dedicated high-speed tracks to the Dutch border () at .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The completion of the Channel Tunnel rail link (High Speed 1) and the completion of the lines from Brussels to Amsterdam and Cologne led to news reports in November 2007 that both Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn were pursuing direct services from London to Amsterdam and Cologne. Both journeys would be under 4 hours, the length generally considered competitive with air travel.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The 25N line opened in 2012–2018 is designed for speeds up to , but is limited to until another existing line Mechelen-Antwerp will be upgraded. It's unknown when it will happen.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: HSL-Zuid (, ) is a 125 km high-speed line in the Netherlands. Using existing tracks from Amsterdam Centraal to Schiphol Airport, the dedicated high-speed line begins here and continues to Rotterdam Centraal and to the Belgian border. Here, it connects to the HSL 4, terminating at Antwerpen-Centraal. Den Haag Centraal (The Hague) and Breda are connected to the high-speed line by conventional railway lines. Services on the HSL-Zuid began on 7 September 2009. It is being served by Thalys trains from Amsterdam to Brussels and Paris, Eurostar trains to Brussels and London and domestic Intercity Direct train services.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: HSL-Oost was planned, but was put on hiatus. It would connect Amsterdam Centraal via Utrecht Centraal and Arnhem to Germany. The existing line from Amsterdam to Utrecht is four-tracked. Two tracks out of four are capable of , but the available voltage is not high enough. The line is planned to be re-electrified to 25 kV AC.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In the north, a new line called is under study between Lelystad and Groningen, with operating speed up to . This line would, along with other measures on the Amsterdam - Copenhagen corridor, allow to reduce the traveling time between these two cities down to 4h 30mn.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Admission of ICE trains onto French LGVs was applied for in 2001, and trial runs were completed in 2005. In June 2007, the LGV Est from Paris to the middle of the Lorraine region of France was opened. For the first time, high-speed services over the Franco-German border were offered. SNCF operates the TGV service between Paris and Stuttgart via Strasbourg and a daily return journey from Paris to Frankfurt via Saarbrücken, while ICE trains operate the remaining Paris to Frankfurt.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The construction of the Channel Tunnel, completed in 1994, provided the impetus for the first cross-border high-speed rail line. In 1993, the LGV Nord, which connects Paris to the Belgian border and the Channel Tunnel via Lille, was opened. Initial travel times through the tunnel from London to Paris and Brussels were about 3 hours. In 1997, a dedicated high-speed line to Brussels, HSL 1, was opened. In 2007, High Speed 1, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to London, was completed after a partial opening in 2003. All three lines were built to the French LGV standards, including electrification at 25 kV. The Channel tunnel itself is geometrically achievable to provide speed, but it is limited to . In 1990s it was claimed that such speed restriction is temporary.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Passenger trains built to specific safety standards are operated by Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel. Direct trains now travel from London St Pancras to Paris in 2h15, and to Brussels in 1h51. On 1 May 2015 Eurostar introduced a weekly service from London to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Thalys high-speed international trains serve the Paris to Brussels corridor, which is now covered in 1h20. Additional Thalys services extend to Amsterdam and Cologne in addition to Belgian cities.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Both Deutsche Bahn (DB) and Eurostar have announced plans for direct services from London to new continental destinations in the Netherlands and Germany. DB have not set a date for any new service to begin, although the company did at one point hope to introduce a five-hour service to Frankfurt by 2017. A four times daily direct Eurostar service between London St Pancras and Amsterdam started running on 4 April 2018. The German manufacturer Siemens has designed trainsets to meet the strict safety standards of Channel Tunnel operation.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: A section of the Perpignan–Barcelona high-speed rail line across the Spanish-French border opened in January 2013. The line includes the new Perthus Tunnel under the Pyrenees and permits high-speed rail services between Spain and France. Since 15 December 2013 the French SNCF operates a TGV service between Paris and Barcelona and the Spanish AVE offers direct Madrid–Marseille, Barcelona–Lyon and Barcelona–Toulouse high-speed services. The journey time for the TGV Paris–Barcelona service is now 6h 25min. A 60 kilometer Nîmes–Montpellier bypass is under construction and will chop 20 minutes off travel times from Barcelona to Lyon and beyond. There is on the other hand currently no funding for the missing segment of high-speed line between Montpellier and Perpignan, which would cut journey times between the two countries by an additional hour.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Another high-speed rail link connecting the two countries is planned via Irun/Hendaye, but is not currently funded.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The north–south axis has been improved by the Swiss NRLA project already in 2007 with the Lötschberg Base Tunnel and in 2016 with the currently world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Further international links between Italy and France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia are under way. These links all incorporate extensive new tunnelling under the Alps. European Union funding has already been approved for the Turin–Lyon high-speed railway, which will connect the TGV and TAV networks, and for a link with Slovenia. In Slovenia, Pendolino-based trainsets are operated by Slovenian Railways as the InterCitySlovenija. Trains connect the capital Ljubljana with Maribor and also with Koper in the summer months. One unit operated as EC Casanova on the line Ljubljana–Venice, but this service was discontinued in April 2008.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Between Austria and Italy, the Brenner Base Tunnel is being constructed to upgrade the Berlin–Palermo railway axis.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Magistrale for Europe (MoE) is a Trans-European Networks (TEN) project for the creation of a high-speed railway line between Paris and Bratislava. It is TEN project No. 17 (Paris – Bratislava), and is already under way.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: MoE adds a connection from Vienna to Budapest to Subotica, Novi Sad & Belgrade. The project is planned to be completed by 2020. It will link 34 million people in five countries. The overall length of the route is .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Western Railway between the capital Vienna and Salzburg is being upgraded. Most new sections have a continuous maximum design speed of . German and Austrian ICE trains operate at a maximum speed of , as do Austrian locomotive-hauled trains (called railjet) which were launched in 2008.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Brenner Base Tunnel under construction will allow speeds of up to . The first part of the New Lower Inn Valley railway was opened in December 2012 as part of an upgrade of the line connecting the future Brenner Base Tunnel and southern Germany, which is being upgraded from two tracks to four and to a maximum design speed of . The section is also part of the Berlin–Palermo railway axis.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Koralm Railway, the first entirely new railway line in the Second Austrian Republic has been under construction since 2006. It includes a new tunnel (the Koralm Tunnel) connecting the cities of Klagenfurt and Graz. Primarily built for intermodal freight transport, it will also be used by passenger trains travelling at up to . The time taken to travel from Klagenfurt to Graz will be reduced from three hours to one hour. The Koralmbahn is expected to be operational by 2025.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The French-Swiss co-operation TGV Lyria and German ICE lines extend into Switzerland, but given the dense rail traffic and the often difficult terrain, they do not attain speeds higher than (ICE3) or (TGV, ICE1, ICE2). The fastest Swiss train is the SBB RABe 501 also named Giruno. It is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways since May 2016. They can reach higher speeds than conventional trains on the curve-intensive Swiss network, however the top speed of can only be reached on high-speed lines. The former Cisalpino consortium owned by the Swiss Federal Railways and Trenitalia used Pendolino tilting trains on two of its international lines. These trains are now operated by the Swiss Federal Railways and Trenitalia.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: To address transalpine freight and passenger bottlenecks on its roads and railways, Switzerland launched the Rail2000 and NRLA projects.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: As of 2020, Denmark has a single high-speed line: Copenhagen–Ringsted Line, designed for a permitted speed of . The Øresund Bridge is designed for a maximum speed of , but pending a signalling upgrade, this is only achieved a few km into Denmark by using Swedish signalling. An upgrade of Sydbanen to is underway, and construction on the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link, which includes a rail tunnel, will begin in 2021.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Denmark's two biggest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, are about apart, and there is a political target to reach a two-hour traveling time, and is set as a target speed. Some parts are planned to be rerouted because the present railway is curvy there and they are likely to be designed for higher than .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The top speed of some parts of the main lines allow some trains to travel at , these are however small sections of the main lines which are quickly passed onto slower sections around . Most parts of the rail network are unelectrified – thus slowing acceleration and top speed. Since 2007 it has been common practice for the infrastructure provider Banedanmark to pad the timetables with extra time to a near European record, resulting in railway companies which only utilize the top speeds to make up for lost time.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Some of the rolling stock running on the Danish rail network are capable of reaching , the SJ 2000 and the IC4.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Denmark's unique signalling system, which contains numerous obsolete components, is being replaced with a new one, the ERTMS 2, to be finished in 2030. This is a requirement for speeds higher than .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: A new Copenhagen–Ringsted Line was completed in 2019. It has maximum until ERTMS is installed in around 2023, then allowing speeds up to . The railway line from Ringsted towards the future Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link was upgraded to in 2010, and will be upgraded to a doubletracked line in 2021. Once this project is finished, Denmark would be able to link the Swedish high-speed lines with the rest of the European high-speed rail network. As Germany is electrifying and upgrading the Lübeck–Puttgarden railway from the current limit of between to , the only non-highspeed section will be Lübeck–Hamburg.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In 2013 the Danish Government (consisting of the parties: the Social Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People's Party) along with the supporting party Red–Green Alliance and the opposition party Danish People's Party entered an ambitious political agreement on the infrastructure project called "The Train Fund DK". The main component of the agreement is to raise taxes on the oil companies operating in the Danish parts of the North Sea in order to raise 2,8 billion pounds earmarked for railway upgrades. The first priority is to reduce the travelling time between Denmark's two biggest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus to two hours. This includes upgrading all main lines to handle speeds up to and building three new high-speed lines with speeds up to , which later can be upgraded to 300 km/h. Furthermore, all main lines and many regional lines will be electrified.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In Finland the national railway company VR operates tilting Alstom Pendolino trains. The trains reach their maximum speed of in regular operation on a route between Kerava and Lahti. This portion of track was opened in 2006. The trains can run at on a longer route between Helsinki and Seinäjoki and peak at that speed between Helsinki and Turku. The main railway line between Helsinki and Oulu is being upgraded between Seinäjoki and Oulu to allow for trains to run at speeds between . Other parts of the Finnish railway network are limited to lower speed.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Between 2007 and 2010 the Russian line from the Finnish border to Saint Petersburg was electrified and improved to allow higher running speeds. The Finnish line (Riihimäki – Saint Petersburg Railway) was also upgraded where needed, mostly to . In 2010, a new service called Allegro started between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, using the improved network. The service has a journey time of 3½ hours. It utilizes a new Pendolino model, supporting both Finnish and Russian standards. Four new trains have been delivered, with a top speed of . As of 2022, the service is on hold, a consequence of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The planned Helsinki–Turku high-speed railway featuring new track from Espoo to Salo would be capable of maximum speeds of , making this the fastest railway in Finland once built.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: A long railway, the first in Iceland, has been proposed to link Keflavík International Airport to the capital city of Reykjavík in order to relieve one of the country's busiest roads. The railway would accommodate high-speed trains of up to , with an average speed of , which would enable the distance to be travelled within just 18 minutes. As of 2022, the project had not advanced beyond the proposal stage.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Norway has several high speed stretches radiating from Oslo. These have speeds ranging from . Several new railroad stretches are under construction and the complete Intercity triangle from Oslo will be finished by 2030.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Norway's only high-speed line is the Gardermobanen (The Gardermoen Railway), which links Oslo Airport (OSL) with the metropolitan areas of Oslo. Here the Flytoget (the Airport Express Train) and some of the NSB (Norwegian State Railways) trains operate at speeds of up to . Gardermobanen contributes to give rail transport a relatively high market share. Almost 38% of the OSL passengers come by train, about 21% by bus, and about 40% by car.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Some more new high-speed lines are planned to be built in the Oslo region, during the 2010 and 2020 decades. Today, however, only small parts of Norway's rail network permit speeds faster than .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: There is a political climate for building more high-speed railway services in Norway, including long-distance lines from Oslo to Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger and Gothenburg. They are assumed to be dedicated single-track high-speed railways having up to . This is still at the feasibility planning stages.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Norwegian government is examining five lines radiating out from Oslo to Bergen, Kristiansand/Stavanger, Trondheim, Göteborg, and Stockholm. A sixth line would be a coastal line between Bergen, Haugesund and Stavanger. At least two investigations on cost and benefit have been made. A more indepth analysis covering route analysis of the 6 lines will be made on order by the Norwegian government beginning late 2010.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The closest from Oslo on each of these lines have good potential for regional trains (except towards Stockholm). Upgrade and new construction to high-speed standard have to some extent already taken place like for Gardermobanen. More is being built and is planned, but with the present ambition it will take decades to have high-speed standard the closest from Oslo on all these lines. The ambition is to some day have or more to Halden, Skien, Hønefoss and Hamar. These projects have higher priority than the long-distance projects. They are also preconditions for the long-distance projects, since they will be used by long-distance trains.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Parts of the new built route Drammen – Tønsberg is in operation with trains (Stadler FLIRT) capable of 200 km/h.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Newly built lines such as the West Coast Line, the Svealand line and the Bothnia line of the network can be relatively easily upgraded to . This requires new signalling system, new trains and perhaps other minor efforts. The old main lines are difficult to upgrade due costs for increasing the bearing of the track. Most bridges and long sections of the main lines need to be rebuilt to allow .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: There are investigations regarding high-speed trains in Sweden, and to evaluate if the Western and Southern Mainline should be upgraded to or if a whole new network of high-speed railway for should be built between Stockholm–Linköping–Jönköping–Gothenburg and between Jönköping–Malmö–Copenhagen. The plan is to ease the situation on the existing railways that are relatively congested, combined with better travel times between both the largest three cities in Sweden, as well as fast regional trains between the cities along the routes (which today in many cases have no or slow railways).


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: An informal date suggestion by the Banverket is operation by year 2030. For two parts (Södertälje–Linköping and Mölnlycke–Bollebygd) detailed planning is done, and they are expected to have construction start by around 2017 and be in operation by around 2025.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Many of the newly built railway lines in Sweden are adapted for speeds up to , such as Botniabanan, Grödingebanan, Mälarbanan, Svealandsbanan, Västkustbanan, and Vänernbanan.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The problem that is slowing down high-speed rail in Sweden is the present signaling system (ATC), which does not allow speeds over . It can be upgraded, but it will not be done since it shall be replaced by the European signaling system ERTMS level 2 on major lines in the near future, allowing high speeds up to . ERTMS level 2 has been installed and is being tried out on Botniabanan, and that railway allows , although no passenger train goes above for now. The train set X55-Regina has been delivered to the rail company SJ with the max speed of but with the option to upgrade the EMU to when possible. Also the mix with freight trains slow down the practical speed.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The three first listed, but not Europabanan, have been prospected by Trafikverket. In several cases the detailed alignment have been decided.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Swedish Conservative government 2006–2014 showed little interest in major railway projects. But the socialist/environmentalist government has from 2014 started further negotiations on stations and other alignment. There is plan to start building Gothenburg – Borås and Ostlänken in 2019. The other railways are expected to be built some years after.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Turkey started building high-speed rail lines in 2003 aiming a double-track high-speed rail network through the country allowing a maximum speed of Only the planned line between İstanbul, Edirne and Kapıkule is situated in the European part of the country.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The first line that was built aimed to connect İstanbul to Ankara (via Eskişehir) reducing the travel time from 6 – 7 hours to 3 hours 10 minutes. The Eskişehir-Ankara line started operating regular services on 14 March 2009 with a maximum speed of , being the first High Speed Rail Service in Turkey making the Turkish State Railways the 6th European national rail company to offer HSR services (although these are situated in the Asian part of the country). The Eskişehir-İstanbul line is still under construction and was due in 2015.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Ankara – Konya line construction began in 2006. The travel time is projected to be decreased to 70 minutes on this route. The construction of the Ankara – Kırıkkale – Yozgat – Sivas line began in February 2009. Several other HSR line projects between major cities such as Ankara – Afyon – Uşak – İzmir, İstanbul – Bursa, İstanbul – Edirne – Kapıkule (Bulgarian border) have reached their final design and are expected to pass to the contraction phase soon. Ankara – Kayseri and Eskişehir – Afyon – Antalya lines are planned to be built in the coming years. The Konya – Mersin – Adana and Sivas – Erzincan – Erzurum – Kars lines were mentioned by the prime minister and the minister of transport. The total length of constructed lines is claimed to be 4,600 km, with long-term plans to expand the network to .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The first 12 high-speed trainsets are ordered from CAF company, Spain. Several new trainsets from Siemens were also bought for the Ankara-Konya line.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Development of a modern rail network for Greece has been a major goal since the 1990s. In 1996, construction of what is currently known as the P.A.Th.E./P. was given the go-ahead. The line, which should have opened by 2004, will link Patras, Athens, Thessaloniki and the Greece–North Macedonia and Greece–Bulgaria borders in Idomeni and Promachonas respectively. The project faced lack of funding and construction difficulties. The Athens-Thessaloniki section has been finished, allowing a travel time of 3 hours 20 minutes, a reduction of three hours.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The two countries have agreed in November 2007 to build a high-speed line between their capital cities Budapest and Bucharest which would be a part of a larger transportation corridor Paris-Vienna-Budapest-Bucharest-Constanța. There is no clear schedule for the project yet, but feasibility studies, ecological impact studies and right-of-way land purchase should not begin before 2009. The link will be designed to support speeds up to , but no technical details have been made public as of March 2008.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: At the moment railway from Bucharest to Constanța support speeds up to . The plan for a high-speed railway through Budapest-Arad-Sibiu-Brașov-Bucharest-Constanța was officially included in the revised TEN-T plan in October 2013 as part of the Rhine-Danube Corridor. Works are planned to be carried out between 2017 and 2025.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: As a result of negotiations between the two European countries and China, it was decided to build a high-speed line between their capital cities Budapest and Belgrade, as a part of a larger corridor Budapest-Belgrade-Niš-Skopje-Thessaloniki-Athens, by upgrading the current Budapest–Belgrade railway line to in Serbia and to in Hungary.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The construction of the railway line in Serbia started in September 2017, when the construction of the Čortanovci tunnel began. The 75 km railway for speed up to between Belgrade and Novi Sad opened on 19 March 2022 (this part was divided in two sections: as of 2018, the Belgrade - Stara Pazova 34.5 km section was planned to be finished in the end of 2020 and the Stara Pazova - Novi Sad 40.4 km section in November 2021). The construction of the 107.4 km section between Novi Sad and Subotica (Hungarian border) was started on 7 April 2022 and is due to be completed for the end of 2024.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The construction of the Hungarian part of the railway, 152 km, was started in October 2021 and is due to be completed by 2025. When the project is complete, the journey between Budapest and Belgrade should be reduced to 2h 40mn according to some sources and to 3h 30mn according to some others.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: After the realisation of a high speed line between Belgrade and Novi Sad, additional high speed connections within Serbia are planned as well as the modernisation of branch lines which will connect the main high speed line Subotica-Niš with neighbouring countries like North Macedonia and Bulgaria.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Several other countries in Europe have launched or planned high-speed rail programmes. Due to geographic challenges, these projects are likely to remain national in scope for the foreseeable future, without international links to existing high-speed networks.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In 2017 Belarus authorities agreed to offer land territories to Chinese corporation CRCC for construction of a high-speed corridor between the EU and Russia through country territory. Chinese engineering companies are also interested in building highways and Russian high-speed railways running in connection with this route with possible interchange with the Moscow-Kazan high-speed corridor.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: A north/south Rail Baltica line from Tallinn to Kaunas is planned to be constructed starting in 2019 and in service by 2026. The line would connect Tallinn and Kaunas via Pärnu, Riga and Panevėžys, while also providing connections to airports and railway terminals. The railway will be the first high-speed, 1435mm standard gauge railway in the Baltics. From Kaunas, it will be connected to the already existing high-speed network in Poland. Project speeds are 240 km/h for passenger trains and for freight traffic. About 80% of construction costs (totalling ca. 5 billion €) will be covered by the European Union, the rest will be paid jointly by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian governments. Indirectly the railway may also link Helsinki, as there are plans for a Tallinn-Helsinki railway tunnel.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The project has been surrounded with controversy in all states, mainly due to environmental concerns and the cost of the project. According to surveys conducted to Estonia, public support remains around 60%, with the percent higher amongst people living in Tallinn and amongst people with higher education, while the percent drops in rural areas. Controversy has also surrounded the choice of route, with some proposing that the railway should also go through Tartu and Vilnius. However this has been dismissed as they are large detours, would increase the cost and bring no sufficient benefit.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: With the highway construction programme in its final stages, the Croatian parliament has passed a bill to build its first high-speed line, a new Botovo–Zagreb–Rijeka line, with an initial maximum planned speed of 250 km/h.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Czech Railways have been running the Super City Pendolino from Prague to Ostrava since 2005. The Pendolino is capable of operating at , but trains that are in service are limited to 160 km/h due to the speeds the railways were constructed for. These limits may be raised in the future to , last parts of 4th transit corridor (Prague – České Budějovice) are already projected for . The railjet is also capable of and reaches that speed in Austria and Germany but is likewise limited to in the Czech Republic.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Velim railway test circuit contains a large 13.3-kilometre track with a maximum allowed speed of for tilting trains and up to for conventional trains.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Czech Ministry of Transportation is planning a high-speed rail network which will be roughly long. Several studies of a possible network have been completed, but there have not yet been any concrete proposals. There are no expectations for any operation before 2020, but Czech railway infrastructure manager (Správa železniční dopravní cesty) has a special budget for preparatory studies. There is also promotion from side of NGOs, e.g. Centrum pro Efektivní Dopravu


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Both the Czech Republic and the German state of Saxony have expressed interest in a high-speed line linking Dresden and Prague via Ústí nad Labem. The line would include a tunnel through the Ore Mountains and relieve the congested Dresden Děčin Railway through the Elbe valley, which as of 2016 was the only electrified line linking Germany and the Czech Republic and serves as an important freight link to the North Sea ports. However, the proposal for the Bundesverkehrswegeplan 2015 (federal transportation plan) which lies out German transportation priorities until 2030 does not include the line in its highest priority category, making construction unlikely in the near term.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In September 2022 the Hungarian Government has announced the purchase of 39 + 10 trains (composed of 7 carriages each) and 50 Siemens Vectron locomotives with the purpose of upgrading up to 2/3 of the existing long-distance passenger fleet running on domestic and international InterCity services of the Hungarian State Railways. The project foresees services similar to those provided by ÖBB's railjet services running in Austria as well as abroad, including between Budapest and Vienna (and forward to Munich or Zurich). The company plans to offer upgraded InterCity services on the following lines:


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The new rolling stock is capable of reaching running speeds up to . However, currently the highest allowed speed limit in the country remains at 160 km/h on the Budapest – Hegyeshalom (Austrian border) line.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Furthermore, in January 2022, the Hungarian Government has also announced to conduct a feasibility study on a new high-speed line capable of reaching speeds up to 250 - 300 km/h between Budapest and Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Romania.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In 2020 the Irish Government confirmed it will be launching a study into an approximately high-speed railway from Belfast via Dublin to Cork and Limerick, which could cost around €15 billion.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Today, the main cities of Poland are linked by railway transport reaching . On 14 December 2014, Polish State Railways started passenger service trains PKP Pendolino ED250 operating speed on line Olszamowice-Zawiercie (part of railway line called Central Trunk Line (CMK) from Warsaw to Katowice). Currently it is the line with highest railway speed in Poland. Several other sections of the Central Trunk Line will soon allow speeds of (with a current speed record set up by Pendolino Train on 21 November 2013 in Poland of ). According to recent plans of PKP-PLK, sections of CMK between Warsaw and Gdańsk () and Warsaw-Kraków (additional ) will be added to present section from no later than December 2015. That will make about of railways available for speed of . Other sections will start operating at in 2016.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Polish Railways for many years did not possess the rolling stock to achieve speeds over . Polish Railways planned to buy Pendolino trains in 1998, but the contract was cancelled the following year by the Supreme Control Chamber due to financial losses by Polish Railways. However, a new contract with Alstom Transport worth 665 million euros was signed in May 2011 and since December 2014, 20 Pendolino units service the Katowice/Kraków – Gdynia line and Wrocław/Warsaw line. However, Pendolinos in Poland are not equipped with tilting system, which would not be very useful on the flat Polish Plains. The lack of a tilting system for the Pendolino train along with choosing Alstom Transportation despite domestic train producers was a subject of broad debate in media and Polish Railways were heavily criticised for that purchase.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Other current plans call for a 'Y' line that will connect Warsaw, Łódź and Kalisz, with branches to Wrocław and Poznań. The geometric layout of the line will be designed to permit speeds of 360 km/h. Construction was planned to begin around 2014 and finish in 2019. In the centre of the city of Łódź the 'Y' line will travel through a tunnel which will link two existing railway stations. One of them, Łódź Fabryczna, will be reconstructed as an underground station, work being scheduled to start in July 2010. In April 2009, four companies qualified for the second phase of a public tender to prepare a feasibility study for construction of the line.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In April 2010, the tender for a feasibility study was awarded to a consortium led by Spanish company Ingenieria IDOM.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The feasibility study project has been granted €80 million in subsidy from European Union. The total cost of the line including construction and train sets has been estimated at €6.9bn and is planned to be financed partially by EU subsidies.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In December 2013, the project was delayed. However, Łódź Fabryczna Railway Station which is the central point of the line is in its second phase of construction and is the largest such project in Central Europe. In November 2013 Sławomir Nowak, the Minister of Transport and opponent of Y-line was dismissed and consultations about the Y-line are undergoing.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The "Y" line links will possibly be extended to Berlin from Poznań and Prague from Wrocław, most probably by upgrading existing lines.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: New rolling stock of home companies (Newag, Pesa Bydgoszcz) have appeared in 2012 and 2013 such as Newag Impuls Train that exceed the speed of 160 km/h.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In the day of 13 December 2020 speed limit was raised to on the line from Warsaw to seaport Gdynia by New Pendolino train.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Since the 1990s, the Italian tilting train, the Pendolino, runs the Alfa Pendular service, connecting Portugal's mainland from the north border to the Algarve, its southern counterpart, at a speed of up to .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: High-speed connections between Spain and Portugal have been agreed upon and planned, but initial works had yet to begin when the projects were cancelled in 2012.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: The Portuguese government had approved the construction of six high-speed lines from the capital Lisbon to Porto, from Porto to Vigo, from Aveiro to Salamanca, from Lisbon to Faro, from Faro to Seville and from Lisbon to Madrid, bringing the two countries' capital cities within three hours of each other, at a max speed of .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: On 8 May 2010, The Portuguese Transport Minister signed off the 40-year PPP covering the construction of the Lisbon–Madrid high-speed line. The total cost was then put at €1.359bn for a double-track standard gauge line from Lisbon to the Spanish border. Also included was a broad gauge line from the Portuguese Port of Sines to the Spanish border. The line was expected to open by the end of 2013 and would reduce the journey time between Lisbon and Madrid to 2 hours 45 minutes, the project however, was cancelled in March 2012.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In October 2020 the government proposed a 75-minute rail link between the country's two main cities, Lisbon and Porto. Also, the Atlantic Axis of the Northwestern Peninsula – Eixo Atlântico do Noroeste Peninsular high-speed railway connection between Portugal and Galicia (covering all the main cities between Setúbal-Vigo) was favoured as of 2020.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Two experimental high-speed trainsets (designed for operation) were built in 1974: locomotive-hauled RT-200 ("Russkaya Troika") and ER-200 EMU. The RT-200 set made only experimental runs in 1975 and 1980 and was discontinued due to unavailability of the ChS-200 high-speed locomotive – they were only delivered later. The ER-200 EMU was put into regular service in 1984. In 1992 a second ER-200 trainset was built in Riga. Both sets were in operation till 28 February 2009.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Instead of these outdated domestic trainsets, imported trainsets have been in operation since March 2009. Siemens Velaro trainsets have operated since 2009 between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, at speeds of up to and since 2010 between Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow, where service is limited to . The Pendolino Sm6, similar to Finnish high-speed trains, began operation in 2010 between Saint Petersburg and Helsinki at up to .


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: In February 2010 RZhD announced it would shortly release a proposal for a new high-speed line to be built parallel to the existing line between Saint Petersburg and Moscow due to congestion on the existing line. In April 2010 it was confirmed that a new Moscow–Saint Petersburg high-speed line with length of and running speed of up to was envisioned, cutting the journey time from 3h 45m to 2h 30m. It is expected the line to include stops at both Saint Petersburg and Moscow region airports. On 28 January 2011, Russia announced that the high speed rail link between Moscow and Saint Petersburg will be finished on time for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The cost is expected to be "somewhere around" 10 to 15 billion euros, not including land purchases, said Denis Muratov, general director of High-Speed Rail Lines. The state will shoulder up to 70 percent of construction costs, with the remainder coming from outside investors. Most of that money is likely to come from international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Muratov said. Sberbank, VTB and VEB may also be interested. In fact, construction of this new Moscow–Saint Petersburg high-speed line didn't start.


title: High-speed rail in Europe

text: Instead of it, on 13 May 2015 the Russian government announced that China Railway Group Ltd will build a high speed rail link from Moscow to Kazan by 2018 in time for the 2018 FIFA World Cup where Kazan is one of the cities that will host some of the football matches. The cost of the Moscow–Kazan link is estimated at $21.4 billion. Train travel from Moscow to Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, will be shortened to just 3.5 hours instead of the more than 14 hours that it takes now. The opening date was later changed to 2020.


title: Surveillance

text: Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.


title: Surveillance

text: Surveillance is used by citizens for protecting their neighborhoods. And by governments for intelligence gathering - including espionage, prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal organizations to plan and commit crimes, and by businesses to gather intelligence on criminals, their competitors, suppliers or customers. Religious organisations charged with detecting heresy and heterodoxy may also carry out surveillance.


title: Surveillance

text: A byproduct of surveillance is that it can unjustifiably violate people's privacy and is often criticized by civil liberties activists. Liberal democracies may have laws that seek to restrict governmental and private use of surveillance, whereas authoritarian governments seldom have any domestic restrictions.


title: Surveillance

text: Espionage is by definition covert and typically illegal according to the rules of the observed party, whereas most types of surveillance are overt and are considered legitimate. International espionage seems to be common among all types of countries.


title: Surveillance

text: The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet. In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by federal law enforcement agencies.


title: Surveillance

text: There is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. Therefore, automated Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of intercepted Internet traffic to identify and report to human investigators the traffic that is considered interesting or suspicious. This process is regulated by targeting certain "trigger" words or phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or online chat with suspicious individuals or groups. Billions of dollars per year are spent by agencies, such as the NSA, the FBI and the now-defunct Information Awareness Office, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, NarusInsight, and ECHELON to intercept and analyze all of this data to extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.


title: Surveillance

text: Computers can be a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software, such as the FBI's Magic Lantern and CIPAV, on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this data. Such software could be installed physically or remotely. Another form of computer surveillance, known as van Eck phreaking, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters. The NSA runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners. Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as PRISM, which is a data mining system that gives the United States government direct access to information from technology companies. Through accessing this information, the government is able to obtain search history, emails, stored information, live chats, file transfers, and more. This program generated huge controversies in regards to surveillance and privacy, especially from U.S. citizens.


title: Surveillance

text: The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines is widespread. In the United States for instance, the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all telephone and VoIP communications be available for real-time wiretapping by Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Two major telecommunications companies in the U.S.—AT&T Inc. and Verizon—have contracts with the FBI, requiring them to keep their phone call records easily searchable and accessible for Federal agencies, in return for $1.8 million per year. Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 "National Security Letters" ordering phone companies to hand over information about their customers' calling and Internet histories. About half of these letters requested information on U.S. citizens.


title: Surveillance

text: Human agents are not required to monitor most calls. Speech-to-text software creates machine-readable text from intercepted audio, which is then processed by automated call-analysis programs, such as those developed by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, or companies such as Verint, and Narus, which search for certain words or phrases, to decide whether to dedicate a human agent to the call.


title: Surveillance

text: Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United Kingdom and the United States possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely, by accessing phones' diagnostic or maintenance features in order to listen to conversations that take place near the person who holds the phone.


title: Surveillance

text: The StingRay tracker is an example of one of these tools used to monitor cell phone usage in the United States and the United Kingdom. Originally developed for counterterrorism purposes by the military, they work by broadcasting powerful signals that cause nearby cell phones to transmit their IMSI number, just as they would to normal cell phone towers. Once the phone is connected to the device, there is no way for the user to know that they are being tracked. The operator of the stingray is able to extract information such as location, phone calls, and text messages, but it is widely believed that the capabilities of the StingRay extend much further. A lot of controversy surrounds the StingRay because of its powerful capabilities and the secrecy that surrounds it.


title: Surveillance

text: Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily even when the phone is not being used, using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone. The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant is required. Records for "one" carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.


title: Surveillance

text: In response to customers' privacy concerns in the post Edward Snowden era, Apple's iPhone 6 has been designed to disrupt investigative wiretapping efforts. The phone encrypts e-mails, contacts, and photos with a code generated by a complex mathematical algorithm that is unique to an individual phone, and is inaccessible to Apple. The encryption feature on the iPhone 6 has drawn criticism from FBI director James B. Comey and other law enforcement officials since even lawful requests to access user content on the iPhone 6 will result in Apple supplying "gibberish" data that requires law enforcement personnel to either break the code themselves or to get the code from the phone's owner. Because the Snowden leaks demonstrated that American agencies can access phones anywhere in the world, privacy concerns in countries with growing markets for smart phones have intensified, providing a strong incentive for companies like Apple to address those concerns in order to secure their position in the global market.


title: Surveillance

text: Although the CALEA requires telecommunication companies to build into their systems the ability to carry out a lawful wiretap, the law has not been updated to address the issue of smart phones and requests for access to e-mails and metadata. The Snowden leaks show that the NSA has been taking advantage of this ambiguity in the law by collecting metadata on "at least hundreds of millions" of "incidental" targets from around the world. The NSA uses an analytic tool known as CO-TRAVELER in order to track people whose movements intersect and to find any hidden connections with persons of interest.


title: Surveillance

text: The Snowden leaks have also revealed that the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) can access information collected by the NSA on American citizens. Once the data has been collected, the GCHQ can hold on to it for up to two years. The deadline can be extended with the permission of a "senior UK official".


title: Surveillance

text: Surveillance cameras, or security cameras, are video cameras used for the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device or IP network, and may be watched by a security guard or law enforcement officer. Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and required human personnel to monitor camera footage, but analysis of footage has been made easier by automated software that organizes digital video footage into a searchable database, and by video analysis software (such as VIRAT and HumanID). The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors which record only when motion is detected. With cheaper production techniques, surveillance cameras are simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance. Video cameras are one of the most common methods of surveillance.


title: Surveillance

text: As of 2016, there are about 350 million surveillance cameras worldwide. About 65% of these cameras are installed in Asia. The growth of CCTV has been slowing in recent years. In 2018, China was reported to have a huge surveillance network of over 170 million CCTV cameras with 400 million new cameras expected to be installed in the next three years, many of which use facial recognition technology.


title: Surveillance

text: In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security awards billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example, the city of Chicago, Illinois, recently used a $5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras, in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield. Speaking in 2009, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced that Chicago would have a surveillance camera on every street corner by 2016. New York City received a $350 million grant towards the development of the Domain Awareness System, which is an interconnected system of sensors including 18,000 CCTV cameras used for continual surveillance of the city by both police officers and artificial intelligence systems.


title: Surveillance

text: In the United Kingdom, the vast majority of video surveillance cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK. The prevalence of video surveillance in the UK is often overstated due to unreliable estimates being requoted; for example one report in 2002 extrapolated from a very small sample to estimate the number of cameras in the UK at 4.2 million (of which 500,000 were in Greater London). More reliable estimates put the number of private and local government operated cameras in the United Kingdom at around 1.85 million in 2011.


title: Surveillance

text: In the Netherlands, one example city where there are cameras is The Hague. There, cameras are placed in city districts in which the most illegal activity is concentrated. Examples are the red-light districts and the train stations.


title: Surveillance

text: As part of China's Golden Shield Project, several U.S. corporations, including IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell, have been working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China, along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people. Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield Project.


title: Surveillance

text: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move through the city, and report "suspicious" activity (such as waving arms, looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc.).


title: Surveillance

text: At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa, Florida, used Identix's facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants).


title: Surveillance

text: Governments often initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5,000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so they could perform "day-to-day monitoring".


title: Surveillance

text: The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas – linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity (biometric data), able to track people's movements throughout the city, and identify whom they have been with – has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberties. Trapwire is an example of such a network.


title: Surveillance

text: One common form of surveillance is to create maps of social networks based on data from social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter as well as from traffic analysis information from phone call records such as those in the NSA call database, and others. These social network "maps" are then data mined to extract useful information such as personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities.


title: Surveillance

text: Many U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network analysis. The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of terrorists, subversives, extremists, and dissidents. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the network.


title: Surveillance

text: Jason Ethier of Northeastern University, in his study of modern social network analysis, said the following of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program developed by the Information Awareness Office:


title: Surveillance

text: AT&T developed a programming language called "Hancock", which is able to sift through enormous databases of phone call and Internet traffic records, such as the NSA call database, and extract "communities of interest"—groups of people who call each other regularly, or groups that regularly visit certain sites on the Internet. AT&T originally built the system to develop "marketing leads", but the FBI has regularly requested such information from phone companies such as AT&T without a warrant, and, after using the data, stores all information received in its own databases, regardless of whether or not the information was ever useful in an investigation.


title: Surveillance

text: Some people believe that the use of social networking sites is a form of "participatory surveillance", where users of these sites are essentially performing surveillance on themselves, putting detailed personal information on public websites where it can be viewed by corporations and governments. In 2008, about 20% of employers reported using social networking sites to collect personal data on prospective or current employees.


title: Surveillance

text: Biometric surveillance is a technology that measures and analyzes human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice.


title: Surveillance

text: Facial recognition is the use of the unique configuration of a person's facial features to accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems. The Information Processing Technology Office ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to by their facial features.


title: Surveillance

text: Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing, involves computers recognizing a person's emotional state based on an analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person's behavior is suspect (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial expressions, waving arms, etc.).


title: Surveillance

text: A more recent development is DNA profiling, which looks at some of the major markers in the body's DNA to produce a match. The FBI is spending $1 billion to build a new biometric database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina (eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of people living in the United States. The computers running the database are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields.


title: Surveillance

text: The Los Angeles Police Department is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol.


title: Surveillance

text: Facial thermographs are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated by blood flow to different parts of the face. Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are hiding something, lying, or worried about something.


title: Surveillance

text: In his paper in Ethics and Information Technology, Avi Marciano maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Marciano proposes four types of harms: Unauthorized use of bodily information, denial or limitation of access to physical spaces, bodily social sorting, and symbolic ineligibility through construction of marginality and otherness. Biometrics' social power, according to Marciano, derives from three main features: their complexity as "enigmatic technologies", their objective-scientific image, and their increasing agency, particularly in the context of automatic decision-making.


title: Surveillance

text: Aerial surveillance is the gathering of surveillance, usually visual imagery or video, from an airborne vehicle—such as an unmanned aerial vehicle, helicopter, or spy plane. Military surveillance aircraft use a range of sensors (e.g. radar) to monitor the battlefield.


title: Surveillance

text: Digital imaging technology, miniaturized computers, and numerous other technological advances over the past decade have contributed to rapid advances in aerial surveillance hardware such as micro-aerial vehicles, forward-looking infrared, and high-resolution imagery capable of identifying objects at extremely long distances. For instance, the MQ-9 Reaper, a U.S. drone plane used for domestic operations by the Department of Homeland Security, carries cameras that are capable of identifying an object the size of a milk carton from altitudes of , and has forward-looking infrared devices that can detect the heat from a human body at distances of up to . In an earlier instance of commercial aerial surveillance, the Killington Mountain ski resort hired 'eye in the sky' aerial photography of its competitors' parking lots to judge the success of its marketing initiatives as it developed starting in the 1950s.


title: Surveillance

text: The United States Department of Homeland Security is in the process of testing UAVs to patrol the skies over the United States for the purposes of critical infrastructure protection, border patrol, "transit monitoring", and general surveillance of the U.S. population. Miami-Dade police department ran tests with a vertical take-off and landing UAV from Honeywell, which is planned to be used in SWAT operations. Houston's police department has been testing fixed-wing UAVs for use in "traffic control".