131–140 of 206 posts
Austria is the only European country I've been to that doesn't have cheap affordable intercity buses. Seemingly none at all. It was kind of strange... Does anyone know why? The only options to get around was the expensive train system - and anyone I asked was bewildered why I would want to take a bus.. Maybe next time I should look in to carpooling or some other options. How do low income people get around typically?…
Interstate 70 in Colorado is very problematic. It is constantly backed up. Colorado needs to learn from this and get serious about rail for shipping and for human travel.
My favorite from this part of Europe is the Bernina Express across the alps from Switzerland to Italy.
Definetly worth a slow tv watch if you love trains. (e.g. https://youtu.be/Mw9qiV7XlFs )
It turns out, you can build new high speed railways. Take note California!
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Not necessarily because no one lives underground and there are probably no existing things like property, gas lines, electricity lines, sewers, pipelines, roads, etc to avoid or reroute. And very little in the way of habitat. The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck. In terms of legal complexity, it's fantastica…
> Big Dig style clusterfuck. The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.
The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.
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I mean, see Brexit; there's a bit of a "what have the Romans ever done for us" aspect to a lot of euroscepticism. Some of the more Brexit-y regions were also amongst the poorest, and thus the largest beneficiaries of EU funding (eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/26/cornwall-fea... ) The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works. Cornwall, say, had reason…
Yes, I remember Wales received a lot of EU funding for infrastructure and there used to be those "funded by the EU" signs everywhere. They voted in favour of Brexit. I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now. Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew…
Yes, the UK government was a net contributor, but the UK government likes to concentrate its spending around London.
EU funding was specifically given out to poorer regions (like Wales) that were long neglected by their national governments.
In case you wonder, the Koralm Tunnel has a length of 32.9km https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
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I (pro-EU Austrian) think they are great, as they show that we also get huge benefits through our EU membership and that we can do such enormous megaprojects only together Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
Austria is probably giving EU more money than it receives, so how is that going to help?
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Another one between Italy, Austria and by extension Germany is scheduled for 2032 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel
Isn't Italy a little geologically unstable? I'd be a bit nervous, going through a long tunnel, in a region known for vulcanism and earthquakes.