this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
784 points (98.2% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
5224 readers
10 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The will never be enough capacity to connect capitals with no intermediate stops. And let me tell you, it's in general a stupid idea.
12h is not a big deal if travelled overnight. Which is currently not possible. So this what we really miss, not constant 300 km/h direct connections.
And of course, we need to stop taxing passenger rail companies. And maybe re-nationalise them, while we are at it. Forcing free market in the railway has been one of the biggest mistakes of the European Union.
Do you mean demand? Currently there is not enough capacity.
Counter-examples to your negativity are found in Japan, Korea and China.
There are no such examples for what the user I replied to is proposing.
They want one high-speed train per each European capital.
There was a concept I thought was neat. Imagine around stops you had a parallel set of tracks with cars that would connect to the train and passengers would have X number of minutes to transfer between the parallel trains before they decouple.
So a 'fast lane' train wouldn't actually stop, it would just couple to another train that does pretty much nothing but transfer passengers to and from the stop.
Though the reality is that would require a lot of work when the counter argument can be "fly a plane direct instead"
The Nightjet trains from La Spezia (Italy) goes both to Wien and München, as it splits in Villach.
On the opposite direction, the train from München is coupled with the one from Wien.
Why is it not done more often? Because coupling trains is a security operation, and it takes time (1h+).
On top of that, modern trains are a fixed composition that you cannot couple and decouple as you like.
Note this concept was about a hypothetical design and infrastructure. That coupling would be horizontal and occurring while moving and using train designs that didn't yet exist.
I said interesting, not necessarily practical. It's something we might have tried to do if we didn't have direct flights as a viable option.
I think 12h is a big deal, for business travelers it makes the whole trip pointless. And for leasure travelers it means paying for a really expensive sleeping cabin or "sleep" in an uncomfortable seat.
I agree the privatisation was a big mistake, also in healthcare, energy etc.
Privatizing is always a mistake. Profit is waste and theft. Making public services for-profit is inevitably going to turn to shit.
I agree completely. I wish more people did :( In Holland in particular, neoliberalism is like a religion and nobody even questions it anymore.