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.
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:
EU politics is so much fun! :)
i mean, there are passport checks before you enter the UK when you travel through the Eurotunnel so that might work alright when you create a special checkpoint in the Budapest, for example? But all in all I think that both Bulgaria and Romania are going to join sooner than later, right now it’s mostly just the case of western politicians gathering support from their right-wing base. And the HSR won’t be built overnight anyhow.
I don’t know what to do about Hungary though, it’s sad how Orban holds back that beautiful country, and with how the fair election system, independent media and courts have been dismantled I don’t see how opposition can even win.
There’s been talk of a tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki for a while, which could connect up to Rail Baltica.
That’s pretty sweet, I wish I could visit my friend in Finland by just hopping on a train, though I wonder if there’s ever going to be enough demand and possible benefits to justify building such a big undersea tunnel.
Maybe not high speed, but you could theoretically run a train line from Helsinki to Talinn and Stockholm. In Southern Denmark you could take the train from Rødby to Puttgarden, across the narrow stretch of water that separates Denmark and Germany. The train would just roll aboard the ferry, and then exit at the other end. As far as I know, that line has been closed down temporarily, and will run through the tunnel they’re building, when it opens up again.
More realistically, you could work to improve the train-ferry connections. The train should take you all the way down to where you board the ferry, there shouldn’t be long waits when you switch from one mode to the other and it should be seamless to purchase a ticket from Helsinki to Berlin, even if part of the trip is on a ferry.
Of course not as fast as traveling over land, but it makes more sense considering the geography, and I personally think it should count as a train connection, if the ferry is included in the train ticket.
Ireland is probably a bit more tricky.
Train ferries a bit logistical hassle through and are pretty slow and costly afaik. Another person linked a proposal for an undersea tunnel between Estonia and Finland which would solve that problem, but connecting to Sweden without a ferry is still tough, unless they decide to invest into a similar project or construct a high-speed all the way around the Baltic Sea through northern Scandinavia which is probably not really feasible.
There are multiple companies running routes between Stockholm and Turku or Helsinki, as well as Helsinki and Tallinn, and they can be fairly cheap to use. It really just is a matter of improving the connections, if you want people to be able to continue on to other European cities. A tunnel or a bridge would be ideal, but they are a big investment and you can make it work without.
I used to travel from Denmark to Åland (between Finland and Sweden) and back a couple of times a year as a child, and have also occasionally continued on to the Finish mainland. The train ride though Sweden is not bad and neither is the boat ride, but having to use three different ticketing systems, making sure you have enough but not too much time, and just that you know where to go and have your tickets in order, can be.