#POV #train #TGV
You’re traversing a continent at nearly 300 kilometer per hour, in relative silence, high comfort and with an incredibly high level of safety.
This is a double-deck double-train, so around 900 passengers are enjoying the same journey.
This specific Lyon-Paris line was opened in 1981, one year after I was born. From the rolling stock to the infrastructure, most of this technology is more than 40 years old, with small incremental improvements here in there.
More than four decades after this tech was introduced we could have had a Europe-wide dense network, cross-linking all regional centers from Oulu to Seville, Edinburgh to Athens, Brest to Luhansk. Maybe we could have had sleeper high speed trains. Maybe we could have closed many airports, and made flying very unappealing, without antagonizing families and friends that live scattered away.
But we don't have any of that.
Instead of building and operating infrastructure for the common good, we have elected and non-elected moronic bean-counters forcing what should be public utilities to compete with each other in a race to the bottom.
“Tailpipe” emission is zero, lifecycle emission is around 3 grams CO2 equivalent per passenger*kilometer, significantly less emissions that a mechanical bike ridden by someone with a fully vegan diet.
Hypothetical medium range “clean” planes, or plans for highway with hydrogen refill stations, are a foolish distraction from the fact that sustainable transcontinental long distance mobility is a solved problem, with well defined advantages, limitations and a proven track record.