>>2655090
Quite the paradox.
>Western europe claims to be an S-tier power
>Can't even negotiate anything with the east
>Can't be bothered to integrate any systems and compromise
>Sucks up money wherever they can pretending to do shit with their sales and marketing departments

>>2655090
You're obviously not eurocrat. The solution is simple-- just make driving and flying more expensive and less convenient.

>>2655090
Remove retarded passport/check-in restrictions on airplanes. Promote carry-on only on airplanes. Promote first come first serve with airplanes instead of retarded booking systems. This will force train companies to get competitive.

>>2655090
>map with no legend
Gay

Didn't France once accidentally buy trains that were too big to fit in their tunnels/stations?

>>2655090
At least as far as prices are concerned, there are a couple of companies in Europe now starting up that are introducing low-cost rail services, sort of the Flixbus or Easyjet of trains. We shall see if they succeed, but the whole mission is to make trains cheaper than flying.

And I would argue that trains still beat flying, at least, for convenience, by taking passengers directly from city center to city center rather than to an airport that could be an hour‘s travel time, and/or an expensive cab ride, outside of town. Of course, buses sometimes do the same, except for Flixbus, which has a lot of weird, middle-of-nowhere transfer points.

Also on the subject of convenience, night train services in parts of Europe have expanded recently. Prices are almost always far higher than low-cost airlines, of course, but it’s comfortable.

>>2655138
>Remove retarded passport/check-in restrictions on airplanes.
Explain?

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1.27 MB PNG

>>2655090
In Europe there needs to be an ultra high speed rail route which functions like a metro and links the main cities. Constant services with flexible tickets and a variety of carriage types:
>Restaurant carts
>Sleeper sections
>Business rooms
>Childrens carriages
>Bike storage
>Short stop commuter wagons

There should be no timetables - just services every 15 minutes.

Design it like the old Soviet metros with Prague, Krakow and Vienna in the middle (more or less geographical centre), with routes:
>Dublin - Kharkiv
> Oslo - Istanbul
>Lisbon - Helsinki
>Circle line load balancing central stations and connecting most capitals

No faggy national ticket sites, just a monthly subscription or OBB GO type app. All transport related taxes across the continent should be ringfenced and put into a big pot to fund it.
NIMBYs opposing anything should be forcibly moved.

Only passport checks should be at a new Istanbul station.

>>2655366
> The fastest train in operation is the Japanese MLX01 Maglev, with a record speed of 581 kilometers per hour.

Current car journy Dublin - Kharkiv is 3500km. We should aim for cross-continental travel in 7 hours absolutely maximum.
Put Europe in the centre stage again for being at the forefront of rail and actually innovating. Fucking angers me how we don't build anything.
I'm not a huge fan of the EU, but if they actually started acting like a colonial empire and doing grand projects as opposed to building arts centres and translating things into 100 different languages, I might actually be open to respecting the union a bit more.

>>2655366
If I wanted to use public transit, why would I want to use a train instead of an airplane?

>>2655090
Trains are best for short and medium distance travel. Over around 500-700km planes overtake them in price efficiency etc and it becomes a non-contest
This isn't something you can really fix without just building faster and more efficient trains
Italy is probably one of the best countries for domestic train travel as you can get anywhere super quick. You can get from Milan to Naples in 4:30hrs for about £50 with almost no interruptions - just public transport to the city centre. Compare to at least 2-3 hours of work when flying and you'd have to be a fool to take the plane.
However something like Milan to Warsaw - the amount of changes and time it takes and cost make it prohibitive to take the train. You can make faster trains and more tracks and decrease prices but the plane will always have its day.

>>2655366
You would have to build lots of new track for any high-speed train because they can't really take curves, it has to be fully straight
Also maglev would be ridiculously expensive
Also you would have to deal with all the gay legislation countries have written to protect their nationalised railway companies

>>2655473
The ideal situation traveling long distance by rail would be :
>go to the station
>walk straight on the train
>have dinner in restaurant cart
>sleep in a bed
>wake up in your destination
>walk out into new city

Air travel will never be able to rival this potential experience, there's too many 'parts' which break up the flow.

>>2655490
It will rival it in price because sleepers are very expensive. You're taking up the space that could be used by like 10 seats and using a bed plus all the amenities that come with that.

Also if they become terrorist targets (as they would if rich people travelled on them) trains are only a few months away from needing security checks for every passenger. In China you already have to have a baggage x-ray and body scan on long distance and expensive trains, I forsee this becoming a thing not long after commercial high speed rail becomes the mode of choice

>>2655488
>they have to be straight
not really have you seen japan?

>>2655272
You should just be able to walk into a plane just like you can walk into a train

>>2655138
It won't.
Because the trains aren't run as competitive companies, they're run as national bureaucracies and make-work programs for politically important subclasses of people so you'll get this. >>2655118

>>2655554
For all its flaws, Russia manages it kinda well. Don't see why Europe can't off what russia was with much higher speeds and far better rolling stock.

>>2655663
I'm really surprised nobody's tried scaling private jet travel at smaller, comfy airports, where everybody is a pre-approved flyer.

>>2655663
not when muslims exist

>>2655663
With no security or passport control? Yeah right.

>>2655554
There already are security controls for some European trains, such as in Spain.

>>2655115
two more weeks zisters

>>2655169
they designed trains accoring to modern station specifications forgetting that at some point they have to pass through 100yo stations

>>2655090
Serious question: How are trains so expensive?
Specially when comparing to a plane:
1. Train station + rails vs Airport and related infrastructure
2. Train (the machine) is much much cheaper than a plane
3. Electricity vs Aircraft fuel
4. Subsided vs taxed everywhere (except fuel)

I really don't understand it

>>2656167
That may arrive the following years with smaller, lower capacity electric A/C.

We are talking of maybe 15pax compared to 120+ pax that current planes get.

These planes would have so little requirements for airport infrastructure, safety controls etc that many smaller regional aerodromes could be used, which would be much faster for passengers

>>2656563
supply and demand

>>2656563
Train infrastructure cumulatively takes up more more land and requires much more maintenance and costs a fortune to expand. You can shit out an airport anywhere and that's it, it's in the network.

>>2656563
1. airports are cheap and easy to upgrade and build, rails are not, for example the proposed 3rd runway at heathrow airport would have a cost of maybe £17bn, whereas the now cancelled hs2 high speed rail scheme had a cost of over £50bn. heathrow third runway would add 50% to the airport's capacity, whereas hs2 is just the basic infrastructure needed for even completing journeys. the cost of hs1, a tiny high-speed rail section about 110km long, was £7bn. as >>2656934 said, you can put an airport anywhere and planes from it can travel to anywhere, whereas £7bn was spent on making a high-speed rail connection that has four stations.
2. you need a lot more trains than planes to have a functioning network. for instance the biggest airline in the world, delta, has under 1000. meanwhile, the entire uk has over 15,000 trains
3. the difficulty is in supplying electricity along the entire line, which has to be done by another company, has to be maintained, and then they charge the train company for using it
4. lmao no, airlines recieve massive subsidies in the US and EU, remember in covid how our goverments gave them billions to stay afloat?

There's nothing to fix, OP.

>>2655138
train companies are almost exclusively state owned. There is no reason for them to lower the prices other than politicians making trains cheaper. Which they should. And make flying more expensive. Being able to fly for 2 hours within Europe for 20 bucks is criminal considering the pollution it creates.

>>2658641
Shut up Gretel.

>>2658685
nice arguments retard. Planes are noisy, polluting as fuck, kill animals, burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow. The train has to be made a better alternative.

>>2658718
>Planes are noisy, polluting as fuck, kill animals, burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow.
still better than the german power grid lol

>>2658725
I get into arguements with germans all the time about this and their only rebuttal is
>youre american what do you know
totally brainwashed

>>2658737
you must know an awful lot about power grids and trains

>>2658725
what are you even talking about? Do you have braindamage? I wasn't talking about the german power grid.