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.
Didn’t know about this, Thank you!
Yeah I saw it passing by on Mastodon. So I thought, this sounds like it’s definitely up /c/fuck_cars alley 😉
BTW it’s not a petition, it’s a citizen initiative, an official way to present a law at european level. If it passes the commision will have to at least ddiscuss about this
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_EuropeAsk Spain… They have both the common gauge (and use it for HSR) and a historical larger gauge. And they have gauge changing trains!
Check out this great video that explains it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J949O1KQhuk
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! :)
