Comment by rob74

> Spain spent an average of about 1.5 billion euros ($1.76 billion) a year from 2018 to 2022 on its high-speed network, more than any other country. However, the vast majority went to new infrastructure with only some 16% earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades. That compares with between 34% to 39% spent by France, Germany and Italy, whose networks are far less extensive, according to the Commission data.

Conflating the maintenance budget with the money invested in new infrastructure in this way is not very useful IMHO. How much inspection/maintenance money was spent per km of (high-speed and overall) railway track would be much more informative...