There is currently petition citizen initiative underway to urge the European Commission to connect all capitals of the EU with high-speed rail.
I’ve already signed it, are you joining ?
https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/select-language?destination=/initiatives/details/2023/000004
Edit: It’s not a petition, it’s a citizen initiative.
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Yeah I saw it passing by on Mastodon. So I thought, this sounds like it’s definitely up /c/fuck_cars alley 😉
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Wouldn’t really benefit from this living in Helsinki, but this would be an amazing thing nonetheless
Undersea tunnel to Tallinn let’s go!
Yeah exactly!
I’m curious to see how much impact it will have on flying and international car traffic.
Signed it!
Poor Finland and Ireland though, I don’t think they’re getting HSR comnections anytime soon
Neither are the southeast Balkan countries (GR, BG, RO), or the Mediterannean island ones (MT, CY).
Running a line through Hungary-Romania-Bulgaria-Greece should relatively be much easier though
In theory yes, but:
- Greece is not ready to handle HSR.
- Bulgarian and Romanian accession to Schengen is still contentious, so what’s the point of HSR if you have to stop for passport checks?
- Nobody is going to give Orban’s Hungary big infrastructure bucks.
EU politics is so much fun! :)
What about the different railway widths?
From what a quick Google search / Wikipedia hunt showed me is that most of the EU (with the exception of Russia and Finland) are already running on “standard-gauge railway” for their high-speed rail
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_EuropeRemoved by mod