That statement is a bit too broad for me. You can not only use highspeed rail within Germany but also to reach the countries around it. E.g. Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, (ICE trains) or use the TGV to reach Paris in a reasonable time.
But with the (illegal) border controls currently it’s insufferable. Will travel through France by train in September and I fear that the border controls will totally derail (haha) our time and travel plans.
We decided to use the train because the air connections took us longer since we didn’t want to vacate in a city with an airport and don’t live in one either.
Even if you adjusted for population (550 mil vs 330 mil) you could easily at least connect all the major cities in the US, given how many smaller regional lines there are in Europe too
How are the illegal border controls from outside into Germany on train currently? By car, they didn’t even look us in the eyes when we passed, a complete waste of time.
The Bundespolizei could do actual work instead of just sort of chilling on the borders and checking people that don’t look German enough (presumingly).
I haven’t crossed border by train since they started to do this again. But when I’m travelling within Germany the trains that come from out of country are usually delayed.
Afaik the train is sometimes stopped to check the papers of all passengers. I guess these are the cases with the heavy delay. But they also do controls in moving trains which makes it more tolerable but still…
I think parts of the problems of train in the US is that they have a lot of desert in the western part of the country (rocky mountains and such) where public transport just wouldn’t make sense. You don’t have that in Europe.
That statement is a bit too broad for me. You can not only use highspeed rail within Germany but also to reach the countries around it. E.g. Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, (ICE trains) or use the TGV to reach Paris in a reasonable time.
But with the (illegal) border controls currently it’s insufferable. Will travel through France by train in September and I fear that the border controls will totally derail (haha) our time and travel plans.
We decided to use the train because the air connections took us longer since we didn’t want to vacate in a city with an airport and don’t live in one either.
When you add up all the miles of rail in Europe, how far could you stretch it out over the US?
Here are numbers from 2022 but you still need to do the math
Even if you adjusted for population (550 mil vs 330 mil) you could easily at least connect all the major cities in the US, given how many smaller regional lines there are in Europe too
How are the illegal border controls from outside into Germany on train currently? By car, they didn’t even look us in the eyes when we passed, a complete waste of time.
The Bundespolizei could do actual work instead of just sort of chilling on the borders and checking people that don’t look German enough (presumingly).
I haven’t crossed border by train since they started to do this again. But when I’m travelling within Germany the trains that come from out of country are usually delayed.
Afaik the train is sometimes stopped to check the papers of all passengers. I guess these are the cases with the heavy delay. But they also do controls in moving trains which makes it more tolerable but still…
I think parts of the problems of train in the US is that they have a lot of desert in the western part of the country (rocky mountains and such) where public transport just wouldn’t make sense. You don’t have that in Europe.
Why wouldn’t it make sense to cross these areas by train? You don’t need a stop in the desert but before and after sounds sensible to me.
crossing it makes sense, yes, but you could also do so by plane, which is much faster