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At least in Israel, many of the old lines, even if they still operated today, would have been long obsolete. A daily train leaving Haifa at 8:30 and reaching Ja
by solatic 5y ago
At least in Israel, many of the old lines, even if they still operated today, would have been long obsolete. A daily train leaving Haifa at 8:30 and reaching Jaffa by lunch? Three, four hours? The same line today makes the journey in an hour, and there are plans on the table to build additional tracks to cut that down to a half hour. People commute from Haifa to Tel Aviv, with three (soon four) tracks passing through the Ayalon bottleneck.
Or, take the line to Jerusalem. The old line took a twisty, no-tunnels approach up the hills to Jerusalem that took hours. It was mostly only used to get out of the city in case snow blocked the main entrance, because it was so slow. The new line, with tunnels and bridges, cuts right through and makes the journey to Tel Aviv in an hour.
It doesn't really matter what the Ottomans or the British built, because it was built for a level of traffic of a largely rural, empty empire. It would never have met modern needs. As populations grew across the Middle East, even a Middle East at peace, all of these lines would have long been dismembered anyway, and replaced with lines designed to actually meet the transportation needs of the people who lived there.
- inglor_cz 5y agoLeaving the most pictoresque one in operation as a tourist magnet (not for daily commute) would definitely work, though. It works in many European countries, especially where the landscape is beautiful, and the Levant has no shortage of stunning landscapes.
- shimonamit 5y agoThey did, at least in Israel. The Jerusalem-Beit Shemesh route was restored and it is a beautiful commute.
- inglor_cz 5y agoI found a video of its stunning beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_urfQTLk_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_urfQTLk_g The author says that the line closed in March 2020, but maybe it has since been reopened?
- inglor 5y agoWe have the same alias :O Anyway, live close by. The train station at Malha was closed 2020 because of COVID because it was a scenic/tourist route. There was discussion of shutting it down permanently but it didn't happen. I used to take it every week for a coding-teaching gig 5 years ago. It will likely either reopen when tourism reaches a pre-covid level in a year or two or will be converted to a light-rail station.
- inglor_cz 5y agoWow, never before have I met anyone with the same nick online. I have been carrying the Elvish name around since approx. 1995, when I was a young Tolkien fanboy. This railway is on my visit list. I hope that tourism recovers enough for it to reopen.
- inglor 5y agoGot mine from a Tolkien name generator around 2000 to create an online alias (after reading and liking a few books) and used it since. Used to have inglor.com and still have the gmail. If you look hard enough you will find my contributions in early-mid newgrounds (inglor day, zombie inglor, the inglor dance and 10k bbs posts :)) Anyway - good taste and nice to meet
- fmajid 5y agoIt’s quite amazing there wasn’t a proper rail line connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem until very recently. Certainly the very mountainous terrain around Jerusalem makes it difficult but the Swiss have managed.
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- MichaelMoser123 5y agoAll the traffic between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was via highway one, for quite some time. I was once told, that the rail network was neglected, out of fear that it would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
- fmajid 5y agoYes, but they have buses instead, which are just as vulnerable. The bus connections from downtown Tel Aviv or Jerusalem to Ben Gurion airport were absolutely abysmal.
- pm215 5y agoTrue, but I think it's easier economically and politically to get from "aging 19th century network" to "modern network" because you can upgrade it piecemeal tackling the worst bits first, compared to starting from "basically no network".
- chris-orgmenta 5y agoAnd land rights issues have likely already been addressed
- ant6n 5y agoIf the line would be operating today, it would have long been upgraded. It's kind of like saying if the line between Paris and London would still be operating, it would be obsolete. But since it was kept in operation, and demand was there, eventually Eurostar was built, doing the trip in 2-3h that was previously overnight.