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The UK — actually, no, just England in this case — less cohesive than Switzerland? Switzerland gives a lot power to each canton. It is also famously mountainous
by ben_w 1y ago
The UK — actually, no, just England in this case — less cohesive than Switzerland? Switzerland gives a lot power to each canton. It is also famously mountainous, which is hard on infrastructure projects. They're also a through-route from Germany (and Austria and France) to Italy, so looking at just their own economy for industrialisation and load is insufficient, as this wouldn't explain the existence of e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
- dhfbshfbu4u3 1y agoYou’re very close to the answer with Gotthard. The only reason this works is because the country is small enough to maintain political cohesion and rich enough to afford projects like this.
- ben_w 1y agoThey're less unified than the UK. Also less unified than just England, which is where HS2 is entirely located, much to the annoyance of Wales who still has to pay for it. > their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high 2x per capita * 1/6 the population = 1/3 the available money Gotthard is longer than all the tunnels in HS2 combined. Total cost: CHF 9.560 billion as of December 2015 (it opened 1 June 2016), about £6.5bn at the exchange rate at the time. As of 2020, the budget envelope set out by the DfT is £98 billion. HS2 is not fifteen times longer than GBT, it is (currently) four.
- dhfbshfbu4u3 1y agoPeople think they are less unified because there are so many parties but die Zauberformel (magic formula) tends to toss that out the window in practice.