this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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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 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