A dozen French police wounded in clashes with protesters opposing high speed rail project
A dozen French police wounded in clashes with protesters opposing high speed rail project
Twelve police were wounded on Saturday (17 June) in clashes with demonstrators in France's Savoie department where a protest against a high speed rail project in the Alps turned violent, authorities said. Some 2,000 protesters, including a roughly 300-strong dark-clad hardcore, were in the Maurienne...
Twelve police were wounded on Saturday (17 June) in clashes with demonstrators in France's Savoie department where a protest against a high speed rail project in the Alps turned violent, authorities said.
Glad to see it's not only Italians protesting against this /s
Seriously this is depressing, a high speed train connecting Milan to Lyon would be amazing and a huge step forward to train travel throughout Europe, but people just love their status quoPeople love their environment too. Do you want to leave next to a high speed train track? They don't.
You can already do Milan Lyon by train. I can offer you this trip proposal:
16:10 Milano P Garibaldi
22:10 Lyon Part Dieu
There is one change at Chambery Challes Les Eaux, around 20h14
Price is around 70€ depending on conditions.
Do keep in mind that I never had took an in-depth look at the project and all it involves. Generally speaking though I am strongly in favour of more railway infrastructure, and I find it funny that lots of people (at least in Italy) love to complain about projects such as new high speed rails but they very rarely complain about new highways for cars.
Also the entire point of high speed is to make it more convenient, for passengers as well as trade trains, which possibly might have beneficial side effects not immediately visible. (Using the same logic as you, I could argue: why should we build highways? Surely a 2 lane road is fine!)
Oh and to answer to your question, I wouldn't mind living close to a railway track, as long as the isolation of the building is decent enough ;)
High speed rail doesn't compete with normal rail, you have to compare it to flights.
- Normal rail 6 hours, from your example.
- Direct flight twice a day, flight 1hour, getting to/from airport another hour. Two flights a day, prices from 300 EUR.
- (Just for comparison, by car it's also around 6 hours)
A lot of people pays the triple price for having 4 more hours for something else. So rail have to take this route in 2 hours to compete with flight.
Why do demonstrators agains the high speed rail?
https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/blog/programme-de-la-saison-5
Pour que ce projet ne voit jamais la lumière au bout du Tunnel ! Depuis plus de 30 ans, un projet de chantier ferroviaire titanesque, impliquant le forage de 260 km de galeries à travers les Massifs Alpins, anime l'imaginaire mégalo et détraqué du consortium TELT, «Tunnel Euralpin Lyon Turin» allié de décisionnaires politiques «visionnaires» et de groupes tels que Vinci Bouygues ou Eiffage. Bien que le transport de marchandises stagne depuis 1994, que la ligne existante ne soit utilisée qu'à 20% de sa capacité de fret, TELT envisage de creuser 11 tunnels, dont le plus grand d’Europe, le «Tunnel de Base» de 57km. Et tout cela pour faire gagner aux voyageur.se.s et aux marchandises seulement 1h25 entre Paris et Milan. Une façon simple de s'assurer des décennies de chantiers juteux, propulsés par plus de 30 milliards d'argent public.
In this case there is already an existing railway line which is only used at 20% of its capacity. With this project you will end up sparing 1h25 on a Paris-Milan. Also they would be supposed to pay taxes so the government can destroy their mountain. It's nonsense, it's not answering a demand, it's trying to create his own demand.
How I see it is that some people still don't understand, (or don't care) that we need to spare resource, not spend more. The french are fed up and are not afraid to show it.
It's nonsense, it's not answering a demand, it's trying to create his own demand.
This bit is slightly confusing and weird, tbh. How do you actually expect to have a demand for high speed trains that are said to shorten 2hrs between Lyon and Turin?
Like, do you expect to have 100% capacity of the old, slow track? You would do that just to show that there's a huge demand for a faster track or would you tell that train track to fuck right off and instead use cars/trucks/etc on the road?Look on Google maps. From Lyon to Turin a car trip takes you there in 3h50m, while a train trip takes you there in 4h56m. Who in their right mind would chose the train?
And I've heard a very similar rhetoric here in my country as well.
First it was against bike lines, because like you said "there was no demand". And that was factually true. You could walk days around the city without seeing a bike, there were no people on bikes. And that was the main argument against bike lines, that it is a waste of money, that nobody uses a bike, there's no demand.
And of course, people were looking for the demand in the wrong place. The demand was on the road in the form of massive traffic jams, everybody and their mother used the car. Now that they built the bike lines it is literally impossible to go outside and not see bikes, they're all over the place. Build it and they will come.And now they're arguing the same thing against building high speed train tracks in our country: there's no demand! Of fucking course there's no bloody demand. Taking the train is expensive, its shitty, its filthy and it takes much longer than if you'd go with a bus or a car. Of course everybody is using the road instead of the train tracks. Why would people suffer needlessly just to show the government that there's no demand? Absolute nonsense.
Rarely you have big projects without people protesting it and French people do love protesting.
But still, there are a series of arguments that they have against it, like for example that the cost of the project is too high and its not justified, that it is better to upgrade existent infrastructure, a danger of environmental disasters, also health concerns due hypothesize presence of uranium and asbestos where the tunnel is bored (studies haven't found none).
Thanks for clarification!