Why Denmark, Norway and Switzerland have so much less high speed trains than southern europeans? Even Germany has less of them than southies. What causes this?
>>212098229 (OP)1. They’re small countries and don’t feel a need for them.
2. Southern Europeans are more willing to take government debt for such projects.
>>212098229 (OP)France, Spain and Italy are the only countries with good high speed trains. In Netherlands domestic trains are limited to 140 km/h. Belgium is so small and densely populated that their IC and regional trains are basically the same. In Germany a lot of high speed lines barely reach above 100km/h average speed. Switzerland is mountainous and small. Austria has a West - East main line with 230 km/h operating speed. Eastern Europe is thirdie. Balkan does barely have any rail service.
>>212098290Norway is bigger than Italy, but they don't even have regular rail between narvik and bodo which sounds bizarre
>>212098487Norway is 90% steep mountains and fjords. It's hell to build that many bridges and tunnels.
>>212099051swiss did something similar in alps
>>212099146switzerland is more densely populated, and a direct connection across the alps makes economical sense than norway building a railway to the north pole.
>>212099295>railway to the north polewhat about a railway to iceland?
>>212099146Switzerland does not have any real high speed trains either. There is a one 45 km long line going to Bern where passengers train can travel up to 200km/h and two long tunnels (Gotthard and Lötschberg) with the same up to 200 km/h speed.
Spanish towns and small cities abused the good will with which high speed rail was conceived in Spain and many of them requested a nearby station and railway even if the return on investment would never, ever bring anything. 'Coffee for everybody' is the Spanish dictum that sums up that mentality of demanding stuff that won't be put to any real use just because others are getting it.
>>212098229 (OP)Base tunnels aren't cheap, you need good reasons to dig one.
Is sitting on a train at 300 km/h not scary?
>>212098229 (OP)Why doesn't Kazakhstan have as high train density as Turkey?
>>212098487Most of Norway’s population lives in Oslo metropolitan area. Same with Sweden, Norrland is Siberia tier of pop density.
>>212101642>Same with Swedeneh southern sweden is fairly equally populated
>>212102522since brazil invented planes
>>212101608Even if you're only going 100kmh you'd probably die anyway if it crashed