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There is only one (big) problem: Germany didn't start building some of the essentials train tracks between Austria and Scandinavia, France, Belgium and the Neth
by andix 5y ago
There is only one (big) problem: Germany didn't start building some of the essentials train tracks between Austria and Scandinavia, France, Belgium and the Netherlands yet. They are going to be delayed at least 10-20 years, not finished before 2040 or 2050.
Thanks to the strong German car and truck industry, politicians are still delaying rail track constructions. Germany's strategy for the last 25 years was to move a lot of transit and also passenger traffic from the rail to the road (car industry again). Now they have mostly traffic jams and not a lot of working train infrastructure left.
- saiya-jin 5y agoI think current gas prices will help shift that a bit. I don't think they are coming down anytime soon.
- andix 5y agoBuilding new train tracks still takes at least a decade. Usually you need one decade to properly plan the route (it's hugely political were the track runs exactly, next to village A or village B? get all the legal stuff done, move a few people out of their houses and find replacements for them, dispossess the fields from farmers, geological examination, drawing the plans, and much more). And then you need another decade to actually build it. Germany is highly populated, so you need to build a lot of tunnels under or close to villages to protect them of the train noise. For this tunnel planning was started in 1996, construction started in 2008, and it will be finished in 2032. So 36 years in total.