Twelve police were wounded on Saturday (17 June) in clashes with demonstrators in France’s Savoie department where a protest against a high speed rail project in the Alps turned violent, authorities said.
Glad to see it’s not only Italians protesting against this /s
Seriously this is depressing, a high speed train connecting Milan to Lyon would be amazing and a huge step forward to train travel throughout Europe, but people just love their status quoPeople love their environment too. Do you want to leave next to a high speed train track? They don’t.
You can already do Milan Lyon by train. I can offer you this trip proposal:
16:10 Milano P Garibaldi
22:10 Lyon Part Dieu
There is one change at Chambery Challes Les Eaux, around 20h14
Price is around 70€ depending on conditions.
Do keep in mind that I never had took an in-depth look at the project and all it involves. Generally speaking though I am strongly in favour of more railway infrastructure, and I find it funny that lots of people (at least in Italy) love to complain about projects such as new high speed rails but they very rarely complain about new highways for cars.
Also the entire point of high speed is to make it more convenient, for passengers as well as trade trains, which possibly might have beneficial side effects not immediately visible. (Using the same logic as you, I could argue: why should we build highways? Surely a 2 lane road is fine!)
Oh and to answer to your question, I wouldn’t mind living close to a railway track, as long as the isolation of the building is decent enough ;)
Do keep in mind that I never had took an in-depth look at the project and all it involves. Generally speaking though I am strongly in favour of more railway infrastructure, and I find it funny that lots of people (at least in Italy) love to complain about projects such as new high speed rails but they very rarely complain about new highways for cars.
So am I, but do it where it matters. International railway is not the future, international railway will be a lluxury, the future is local railway, where people made a habit of using cars. Everywhere you need to transport goods, then you need to transfor it with railway instead, because otherwise you will have trucks and pollution.
This project is an extravaganza of entrepreneurs who pretend to do something great while they just want to feast in public fundings.
Oh and to answer to your question, I wouldn’t mind living close to a railway track, as long as the isolation of the building is decent enough ;)
Why do you think those people are protesting for? They are protesting because they saw how it was made in other places in France and they don’t want to be the next people burned.
International railway is not the future, international railway will be a lluxury, the future is local railway
and
Everywhere you need to transport goods, then you need to transfor it with railway instead, because otherwise you will have trucks and pollution
Hold on. Are you an isolationist? Do you want member states in the EU to do less trade with each other and people to travel less inbetween member states?
I already said this in another post, but international trade of goods is perfectly fine. in this case there is already a line which is underused, at 20% usage. What we don’t want more of is international passengers traffic. This is a huge luxury and people need to get rid of the idea that traveling far is a given. No, it’s not. Not any more. It was, with the profusion of energy, but now it’s not any more.
I do want people to do less travel between states, because we cannot afford it on a carbon level, and train are still heavily propelled with coal electricity (41%,). We will need to trade metals between states for example, but the traffic of passengers will become a luxury that we will have to get rid of, or at least maintain, but certainly not expand with high speed trains. You can send your complains to the laws of physics, because I’m not enforcing anything, I’m just stating the reality that we need to think twice about how we spend our last resources. Just because people say “train, train” doesn’t mean it’s the right type of train in the right place. We are that deep into the crisis.
tldr: Sending people even faster from Paris to Turin is not a priority and doesn’t deserve neither the bigger tunnel in Europe nor 30B€. The priority is to remove trucks from the roads and rethink the railway in the inner country.
Yeah, that has zero chance of ever working. Its completely unrealistic, furthermore I’d argue that its a pro-fascist stance simply because by virtue of imposing those kind of restrictions on people and commerce will very likely lead to fascists taking power. I can easily see that happening.
I already said this in another post, but international trade of goods is perfectly fine. in this case there is already a line which is underused, at 20% usage.
For example in this case, the only way to achieve this is either 1) faster rail alternative that’s better than transporting via trucks (which you very explicitly do not want) or 2) state force via taxes on trucks/roads/fuel.
The moment you do the second options fascists, nazis, white supremacists and the rest of the filth will undoubtedly surge in the polls.
We’ve seen what happened with just a immigrant crisis.
This kind of move will not only cartoonishly fail to achieve any of its goals but it’ll put fascists in power.This is a huge luxury and people need to get rid of the idea that traveling far is a given. No, it’s not. Not any more. It was, with the profusion of energy, but now it’s not any more.
This won’t happen, climate change is not the type of thing where people notice its effects relatively immediately. And for that reason they’re not going to vote for the ones who wish to install draconian measures and greatly hamper the economy and all that suffering that comes with that.
“Fascist, nazi, white supremacists”… I’m not sure that you are debating seriously, /u/grus.
On top of that I see that you are subscribed to /m/shitposting, /m/unpopularopinion and /m/noncredibledefense.
I’m not interested anymore, I posted some source, read it or not, I’m out.
High speed rail doesn’t compete with normal rail, you have to compare it to flights.
- Normal rail 6 hours, from your example.
- Direct flight twice a day, flight 1hour, getting to/from airport another hour. Two flights a day, prices from 300 EUR.
- (Just for comparison, by car it’s also around 6 hours)
A lot of people pays the triple price for having 4 more hours for something else. So rail have to take this route in 2 hours to compete with flight.
This time of luxury is gone. You don’t need to spare 1h on an international rail trip, we are in a situation of crisis, not in a situation of “feelgood”. You don’t need the public to invest so much resources in this project while so many other railway projects are still necessary but dormant.
A lot of people pays the triple price
I’ll be brutally honest: fuck them.
Let them spend one more hour and let’s send this public money and workforce to remove trucks from the roads and replace it with rail. And if you need 1 more hour to do Paris Turin then so be it. Punch a pillow roll over the floor. In the meantime we transform the roads in the inner country.
Why do demonstrators agains the high speed rail?
https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/blog/programme-de-la-saison-5
Pour que ce projet ne voit jamais la lumière au bout du Tunnel ! Depuis plus de 30 ans, un projet de chantier ferroviaire titanesque, impliquant le forage de 260 km de galeries à travers les Massifs Alpins, anime l’imaginaire mégalo et détraqué du consortium TELT, «Tunnel Euralpin Lyon Turin» allié de décisionnaires politiques «visionnaires» et de groupes tels que Vinci Bouygues ou Eiffage. Bien que le transport de marchandises stagne depuis 1994, que la ligne existante ne soit utilisée qu’à 20% de sa capacité de fret, TELT envisage de creuser 11 tunnels, dont le plus grand d’Europe, le «Tunnel de Base» de 57km. Et tout cela pour faire gagner aux voyageur.se.s et aux marchandises seulement 1h25 entre Paris et Milan. Une façon simple de s’assurer des décennies de chantiers juteux, propulsés par plus de 30 milliards d’argent public.
In this case there is already an existing railway line which is only used at 20% of its capacity. With this project you will end up sparing 1h25 on a Paris-Milan. Also they would be supposed to pay taxes so the government can destroy their mountain. It’s nonsense, it’s not answering a demand, it’s trying to create his own demand.
How I see it is that some people still don’t understand, (or don’t care) that we need to spare resource, not spend more. The french are fed up and are not afraid to show it.
It’s nonsense, it’s not answering a demand, it’s trying to create his own demand.
This bit is slightly confusing and weird, tbh. How do you actually expect to have a demand for high speed trains that are said to shorten 2hrs between Lyon and Turin?
Like, do you expect to have 100% capacity of the old, slow track? You would do that just to show that there’s a huge demand for a faster track or would you tell that train track to fuck right off and instead use cars/trucks/etc on the road?Look on Google maps. From Lyon to Turin a car trip takes you there in 3h50m, while a train trip takes you there in 4h56m. Who in their right mind would chose the train?
And I’ve heard a very similar rhetoric here in my country as well.
First it was against bike lines, because like you said “there was no demand”. And that was factually true. You could walk days around the city without seeing a bike, there were no people on bikes. And that was the main argument against bike lines, that it is a waste of money, that nobody uses a bike, there’s no demand.
And of course, people were looking for the demand in the wrong place. The demand was on the road in the form of massive traffic jams, everybody and their mother used the car. Now that they built the bike lines it is literally impossible to go outside and not see bikes, they’re all over the place. Build it and they will come.And now they’re arguing the same thing against building high speed train tracks in our country: there’s no demand! Of fucking course there’s no bloody demand. Taking the train is expensive, its shitty, its filthy and it takes much longer than if you’d go with a bus or a car. Of course everybody is using the road instead of the train tracks. Why would people suffer needlessly just to show the government that there’s no demand? Absolute nonsense.
This whole project was started 30 years ago. We have way different priorities now for these 30 billions euro and workforce.
We are not talking about a bike lane which “is here or is not here”, we are talking about a track at 20% usage for 30 years. If the industry was asking for more railway then the usage would be at least 70%. Now it’s 20%, the demand is fulfilled.
They are trying to put more people on the train. But the priority is not to transport people to other countries. If it was a project to renovate inner lines I would say why not, but transporting people across countries by digging the longest tunnel in Europe? No. It’s ubertourism all over again.
The explanation is in the last line:
Une façon simple de s’assurer des décennies de chantiers juteux, propulsés par plus de 30 milliards d’argent public.
The industrial are trying to use public funding to guarantee their own business for decades.
And now they’re arguing the same thing against building high speed train tracks in our country: there’s no demand! Of fucking course there’s no bloody demand. Taking the train is expensive, its shitty, its filthy and it takes much longer than if you’d go with a bus or a car. Of course everybody is using the road instead of the train tracks. Why would people suffer needlessly just to show the government that there’s no demand? Absolute nonsense.
It’s a false equivalence. What is the demand to move from Paris to Turin? Tell me, and tell me it’s worth spending 30 billions of € of public money and decades of workforce to dig the largest tunnel in Europe. We have other priorities now.
You cannot compare it to a bike lane or a bus lane.
Didn’t I answer to your comment here? I swear I remember writing a long-ass comment, I’ve no idea why its not showing up.
Did you receive a reply, btw?I see this:
It’s nonsense, it’s not answering a demand, it’s trying to create his own demand.
This bit is slightly confusing and weird, tbh. How do you actually expect to have a demand for high speed trains that are said to shorten 2hrs between Lyon and Turin?
Like, do you expect to have 100% capacity of the old, slow track? You would do that just to show that there’s a huge demand for a faster track or would you tell that train track to fuck right off and instead use cars/trucks/etc on the road?Look on Google maps. From Lyon to Turin a car trip takes you there in 3h50m, while a train trip takes you there in 4h56m. Who in their right mind would chose the train?
And I’ve heard a very similar rhetoric here in my country as well.
First it was against bike lines, because like you said “there was no demand”. And that was factually true. You could walk days around the city without seeing a bike, there were no people on bikes. And that was the main argument against bike lines, that it is a waste of money, that nobody uses a bike, there’s no demand.And of course, people were looking for the demand in the wrong place. The demand was on the road in the form of massive traffic jams, everybody and their mother used the car. Now that they built the bike lines it is literally impossible to go outside and not see bikes, they’re all over the place. Build it and they will come.
And now they’re arguing the same thing against building high speed train tracks in our country: there’s no demand! Of fucking course there’s no bloody demand. Taking the train is expensive, its shitty, its filthy and it takes much longer than if you’d go with a bus or a car. Of course everybody is using the road instead of the train tracks. Why would people suffer needlessly just to show the government that there’s no demand? Absolute nonsense.
btw I think I also lost a post in a different thread a few hours ago.
btw I think I also lost a post in a different thread a few hours ago.
Yeah, I posted another response. Something is definitely up with the instance, but that’s to be expected given the situation.
Slightly annoying but not a huge problem at the end of the day, I’m sure it’ll get fixed.Lemme try and recall what I responded.
What is the demand to move from Paris to Turin? Tell me, and tell me it’s worth spending 30 billions of € of public money and decades of workforce to dig the largest tunnel in Europe. We have other priorities now.
It’s not just a high speed rail between two small random cities. It connects the two biggest countries in all of Europe, and not only that but it acts as a bridge that unites and will unite a high speed rail coming from western to eastern Europe, or rather south-western and south-eastern.
Take a look at the map of high speed rail, where else would you connect Italy and France better than here? There’s no other better suited place for it. This is the bridge that connects Spain, France through Italy to Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Hungary, Romania and the rest of the Balkans.
I don’t know about your political views but I personally hold this to be a very large priority for the continent. We can’t fight against climate change and reduce our reliance on planes, trucks and cars without high speed train infrastructure.
We are not talking about a bike lane which “is here or is not here”, we are talking about a track at 20% usage for 30 years. If the industry was asking for more railway then the usage would be at least 70%. Now it’s 20%, the demand is fulfilled.
This past here was the most interesting though because I went and search for how many Romanians travel by train just out of curiosity. And what do you know, 19.6% of Romanians “choose” to go by train, while 74.5 “prefer” to go by car, basically the same numbers as in the Lyon-Turin case.
And I hear the exact same arguments against upgrading our train infrastructure: nobody uses it, there’s no demand.
Who in their right mind would choose to pay more, suffer in sweaty, nasty conditions and then take much longer when you can have a more comfortable, faster and often cheaper ride via car or a bus?Let’s take a more concrete example: Romanian tourists going to Greece. That’s our favorite destination, we’re basically Greece’s no.1 tourists, it’s a love-love situation.
By train: 30 hours to get there
By car on the other hand its only 14 hours, less than halfThe fact that you’ll rarely find Romanians taking the train to Greece does not mean and cannot mean that there’s no demand for it, that is simply illogical and not how humans work. The demand is simply seen in the number of cars on the road.
You cannot compare it to a bike lane or a bus lane.
And that’s explicitly the reason why I compared it to the demand for a bike or a bus lane, because you don’t see the demand in the number of people using bikes when there’s no bike lanes or the number of people using shitty, awful bus services, instead you see in the number of people who use cars to do pretty much everything.
The reason is simple: they have no other sensible, reasonable choice.
Build it and they will come.Same thing happened with our trams. Our old trams were awful, noisy, slow and smelly. Not popular at all. None of them were crowded, there was “no demand” to get the way more expensive, fancy, good looking ones. Yet when they did buy them, they instantly became a favorite for people.
Rarely you have big projects without people protesting it and French people do love protesting.
But still, there are a series of arguments that they have against it, like for example that the cost of the project is too high and its not justified, that it is better to upgrade existent infrastructure, a danger of environmental disasters, also health concerns due hypothesize presence of uranium and asbestos where the tunnel is bored (studies haven’t found none).
Thanks for clarification!
