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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Signed! My odometer cannot wait
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! :)
If you’re interested in EU cross-border rail connections, I highly recommend following Jon Worth on Mastodon. He spends a lot of time actually testing the various border routes (and has some pretty strong opinions on them).
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
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Will sign it up later and will 100% tell about this to family
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.
I’d love to sign it, but it insists I identify myself with the Dutch DigiD app and then it gives me an error. Maybe that’s why it’s not been signed by a lot of people. It’s impossible.
You can sign without digital ID by providing name and passport number. That’s how I did it just some moments ago.
