TL;DR: Brussels proposes that all future railway projects in Finland should be built with the narrower track width, basically requiring them to be on a different network. Also Finland should come up with a plan to rebuild the entire railway network to the standardized track width.
Not only is this ludicrously expensive but it is also pointless as Finland is essentially an island and thus rail travel to other european countries is not possible.
In Spain, we built the high speed network to international gauge. We still maintain a lot of Spanish gauge (side note: fuck Subercase)
It might make sense only for two lines now, one to Sweden and a hypothetical one if a really long tunnel below the Baltic is ever built. All the rest can be left as it is.
Yes, changing gauge nationwide is a huge undertaking with an enormous price tag. You need to think and plan carefully, and the unit of time used is the decade. At least, if Spain is any example: we started in 1992.
I mean, sure. Purely with EU money of course.
But honestly, I think this is one of those committees that are in charge of unifying european standards as a whole with little to no care with the repercussions. As in, they don’t even expect it to happen but it looks good on paper.
Can’t imagine worse money wasting.
This is purely on the silly Finns and their genius idea to continue to have the same gauge as the Soviet Union when the majority of their rail network was built.
Apart from this one connection from Haparanda to Tornio, there are no trains from the EU to Finland, or am I mistaken?
Presumably this affects Ireland as well?
Just like how Ukrainian shouldn’t narrow their soviet train tracks to EU standards. /s
Finland, don’t be stupid. You should at öleast make it very hard for russia to use your railnetwork.
If the invasion of Ukraine proved anything, it’s that not having the same rail gauge as Russia provides a gigantic benefit to a country’s (that neighbours Russia) national defense. While the cost would be very high, it could be justified, to a degree, as a military expense. And a very important one at that.
I am not sure ‘unreasonable’ is the word I’d use… ‘impractical’ is a better fit. Like, it is a lot of work, but I am not sure it is ‘unreasonable’ to imagine getting onto a train and then drive all the way to Rome or Lisbon without getting off. Especially not when the Baltics are preparing to do something like that with the Rail Baltica project.
Plus as a side benefit, if the worse should happen and Russia blows another fuse, stopping them using rails will again screw over their logistics.
This is the _least_ important thing to standardize in the EU rail infrastructure. Pretty much everything else is more important – Germany, Sweden, Poland leaving their outdated electrification standards, standardizing signaling everywhere, widening the load gauge in Italy, France, etc. The benefits from Finland being in the same gauge right are extremely low due to there being zero trafficked corridors.
Obviously if a tunnel to Estonia or a bridge to Sweden would be built, that might change considerably, but neither of these concepts are even on an (engineers) drawing board as of now.
This EU suggestion is what insanity looks like.
Also a great example why we cannot give up the veto ever.
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TL;DR: Brussels proposes that all future railway projects in Finland should be built with the narrower track width, basically requiring them to be on a different network. Also Finland should come up with a plan to rebuild the entire railway network to the standardized track width.
Not only is this ludicrously expensive but it is also pointless as Finland is essentially an island and thus rail travel to other european countries is not possible.
In Spain, we built the high speed network to international gauge. We still maintain a lot of Spanish gauge (side note: fuck Subercase)
It might make sense only for two lines now, one to Sweden and a hypothetical one if a really long tunnel below the Baltic is ever built. All the rest can be left as it is.
Yes, changing gauge nationwide is a huge undertaking with an enormous price tag. You need to think and plan carefully, and the unit of time used is the decade. At least, if Spain is any example: we started in 1992.
I mean, sure. Purely with EU money of course.
But honestly, I think this is one of those committees that are in charge of unifying european standards as a whole with little to no care with the repercussions. As in, they don’t even expect it to happen but it looks good on paper.
Can’t imagine worse money wasting.
This is purely on the silly Finns and their genius idea to continue to have the same gauge as the Soviet Union when the majority of their rail network was built.
Apart from this one connection from Haparanda to Tornio, there are no trains from the EU to Finland, or am I mistaken?
Presumably this affects Ireland as well?
Just like how Ukrainian shouldn’t narrow their soviet train tracks to EU standards. /s
Finland, don’t be stupid. You should at öleast make it very hard for russia to use your railnetwork.
If the invasion of Ukraine proved anything, it’s that not having the same rail gauge as Russia provides a gigantic benefit to a country’s (that neighbours Russia) national defense. While the cost would be very high, it could be justified, to a degree, as a military expense. And a very important one at that.
I am not sure ‘unreasonable’ is the word I’d use… ‘impractical’ is a better fit. Like, it is a lot of work, but I am not sure it is ‘unreasonable’ to imagine getting onto a train and then drive all the way to Rome or Lisbon without getting off. Especially not when the Baltics are preparing to do something like that with the Rail Baltica project.
Plus as a side benefit, if the worse should happen and Russia blows another fuse, stopping them using rails will again screw over their logistics.
This is the _least_ important thing to standardize in the EU rail infrastructure. Pretty much everything else is more important – Germany, Sweden, Poland leaving their outdated electrification standards, standardizing signaling everywhere, widening the load gauge in Italy, France, etc. The benefits from Finland being in the same gauge right are extremely low due to there being zero trafficked corridors.
Obviously if a tunnel to Estonia or a bridge to Sweden would be built, that might change considerably, but neither of these concepts are even on an (engineers) drawing board as of now.
This EU suggestion is what insanity looks like.
Also a great example why we cannot give up the veto ever.