If you are from the EU: Sign it it’s free. If it gets enough signatures the organizers get to meet with European Commission representatives and a public hearing in parliament. Credit to Adam Something on YouTube for posting about this.
Honestly train travel is just such a nice experience compared to flying. No security, no coming early, almost no limit on luggage, bigger seats, food on board, less noise, I could go on. If I have to take a 2 hour flight I would rather take a five hour train ride.
When my wife and I visited Germany we bought tickets that were good for 7 non consecutive days on ICE for $500 for the two of us. It was a great experience and we'll do it again. (I think that deal is only available to non-EU visitors.)
I signed as well. Please fix this and make it one Europe on rail as well.
I want to see them try to connect Nicosia with the nearest EU capital by rail. That'll be an engineering feat.
That and Dublin, Ireland. They'd have to build an entirely new tunnel to bridge us to Europe since we would now not be able to go through the UK lol
Also Malta
I don't agree with it. There are many capital cities that are in terrible locations for highspeed rail and are would be a diservice to the rest of the country.
Cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, and Viena are just the worst places to reach for most of their respective countries. Say you live in Munich and you want to travel to Amsterdam, you are still stuck on the slow train if you focus on a Berlin-Amsterdam route.
If high speed rail is supposed to be successful it should be about covering geographical distance fast. Or the car and planes are still going to be the prefered option.
It's not like this initiative disallows you from building other high speed rail connections. Just because a high-speed rail connection exists to Berlin doesn't stop you from making one to Munich.
On the contrary, the network effects of building out infrastructure means these connections would be even more useful. A high-speed rail connection from Rome to Berlin, for example, could hypothetically go through Milan, Lichtenstein, Munich, Nuremburg and Leipzig. This would mean all these cities on the route would benefit from connection to the rest of Europe.
EDIT: Also, looking at the map of Germany, connections like Budapest - Brussels also goes straight through Munich, so it'd probably be in that connection too
It's not like this initiative disallows you from building other high speed rail connections.
It does though, raillines cost money and money is finite.
When you build poorly planned highspeed lines any new line you want to build after that is going to be underutilized. Underutilized raillines will be (and have been) scrapped, which makes certain areas even less reachable by train
I think a Rome-Berlin line makes somewhat sense, due to the south-west - north-east coverage you get. But Amsterdam-Berlin does nothing more than isolating the North of both the Netherlands and Germany even further
Yeah that’s a fair point but most people in these countries still live in the capitols. Connecting Amsterdam and Berlin for example with HSR would allow millions to travel quickly. I get it we should focus first on getting the countries connected, but it can’t hurt to sign this.
most people in these countries still live in the capitols
Well for Berlin, the City proper has a population of 3.6 million (~ 4.2% of Germans) and the larger metropolitan area has about 6.1 m (~ 7.2%).
Contrast that to the Ruhr area that has a metropolitan area with 10.6m population (~ 12%).
Also outside those areas, western Germany is more densely populated that the east around Berlin.
While I don't necessarily agree with this ECI, keep in mind that Germany's decentralisation is the exception in Europe, rather than the norm. In most other countries the population is concentrated in a few cities only.
Of course, why would you want to incentivize and reward that centralisation by making the capitals even more appealing by focusing HSR expansion there? That's another question.
No they don't, most people live outside of the capitals.
Amsterdam-Berlin is vanity project that is a diservice to both the Netherlands and Germany. The only benefactors are Amsterdam and Berlin
I wrote it badly, sorry about that of course I know that most people in germany don‘t live in berlin. I was just trying to say that it definitely is still worth it to connect these cities at some point, but currently there absolutely are more important projects.
At somepoint probably yeah. Unfortunately, it does seem that Amsterdam-Berlin seems to be pushed for a lot, and I fear for that poor decision fucking up the rest of the raillines.
An Amsterdam-hamburg-berlin line makes more sense imo, especially when you push it more towards the north as it doesn't cut the countries in half. It also gives you possibility to expand both north towards scandanavia, which you can extend further south to the rest of europe, or eastern europe through berlin.
But I doubt that will happen, because that is a bit slower than through hanover
This could route still stop at Hannover, which is well-linked to Hamburg and if they actually build a new, more northern route than the existing one, other trains could use the route, too. Or the train from Copenhagen to Amsterdam stops in Hamburg.
The Ruhr area is already served an ICE connection from Cologne to Amsterdam.
It's not a vanity project at all.
There are many high speed stations outside of the cities in Europe? Have you traveled to at least a couple of them? The experience sucks and the extra commuter train travel to the station makes the trip longer, especially when you want to a rural area on the other site of the city, then you first have to commute to central station of the city and take the regional train from there.
HST stations only outside of the city make trains less competitive to airplanes.
Already signed. It doesn't have to be necessarily HSR and it doesn't necessarily have to go all the way to the capital, but we need better international rail infrastructure. While locally we have some of the best links in the world (at least in many EU countries, although far from all of them), having to cross the border is always an incredible pain. I believe the Commission is working on an EU wide ticket platform, that will hopefully make things slightly less painful, although what needs to change is the service, not (just) the software.
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Thanks for posting this! I'm a firm believer that the best way to reduce emissions from planes (not the biggest polluter, but definitely up there) is providing viable alternatives. Trains are the clear alternative.
Just signed the initiative.
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