this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 days ago (21 children)

Were there any advantages over normal trains except cool factor?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (6 children)

https://youtu.be/3APay0wgYt0

Speed, at the cost of an incompatible and more expensive infrastructure, and even "regular" raillines are now can be upgraded to 300km/h.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (4 children)

even "regular" raillines are now can be upgraded

I assume this is contingent on the existing line being fairly straight and direct? Where I live, the tracks are very meandering to navigate hills and valleys, and train staff told me the chance of an upgrade was basically zero.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Definitely impossible for most tracks. Possible for some, but at high costs. Germans have been upgrading some lines for decades now... The best (worst) example being the north-south towards Basel. For high speed the paths need to be further apart from eachother, there need to be better barriers between tracks and what's around them, the curves indeed need to be wider, the 'tilt' in the track in curves might need to be adjusted too... All of which leads to necessity of many new bridges and tunnels where this upgrading is impossible due to surroundings. It costs many millions of € per km and many decades to accomplish. The French on the other hand mainly went for "build new lines", it was clearly the better approach to get shit done fast (tho skipping many possible stops altogether on the new lines).

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