The Ministry of Transport and the NS Hispeed and ProRail companies have agreed that the Netherlands’ high-speed railway line (HSL) will open for use on 7 September.

Trains will ride between Amsterdam and Rotterdam and will be able to reach speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour. That is 30 kilometres an hour faster than the current intercity trains travelling on standard railway lines. This means that a journey from Amsterdam to Rotterdam will be 21 minutes shorter and last just 43 minutes.

Plans for high speed trains to travel between Amsterdam and the Belgian capital Brussels in 2007 failed to materialise, due chiefly to problems with security, equipment and infrastructure.

It is now expected that a high-speed connection between the cities will open in the second half of 2010. When it does, trains built by the Italian firm AnsaldoBreda will reach speeds of up 250 kilometres per hour.

By the end of the year the Thalys train, used on high-speed links between Paris, London, Cologne and Amsterdam, will be able to reach speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour on the HSL.

Photo of the HSL by cinto2 (flickr)