By 2020, the train line Luxembourg-Brussels may be reduced by 20 minutes. Etienne Delorme

By 2020, the train line Luxembourg-Brussels may be reduced by 20 minutes. Etienne Delorme

Instead, Luxembourg's ministry of sustainable development and infrastructure has announced that time will be cut by 20 minutes, and will take 2 hours and 33 minutes by 2020.

In 2016, the Belgian and Luxembourg prime ministers Charles Michel and Xavier Bettel had announced that by 2023, going from one capital to the other would take 2 hours and 7 minutes.

According to our sister outfit, Paperjam, this was planned in the context of introducing tilting trains on the Basel-Brussels line. The Luxembourg government has already spent €100 million on the project, while the Belgian government invested €1 billion into the renovation of its rail tracks. However, the Swiss authorities did not consider this a priority line and shelved the project, and the idea of using tilting trains seems to have been put on the back burner.

A new feasibility study has dampened the ambitions of infrastructure minister for François Bausch, according to Paperjam. Meanwhile, the CFL and Infrabel will modernise the line and tracks, through re-electrification, getting rid of bends or improving the track switches.

Currently, it takes 3 hours to reach Brussels from Luxembourg; by car it only takes 2 hours.

Update: A previous version of this article misstated the targeted travel time between Brussels and Luxembourg. This was corrected on 3 November.