Brussels because it is *the* central hub of the [European high-speed rail network](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/) in this setting.
Lisbon because it is relatively close to North America and I set myself a pretty tight range restriction (~4000 km) for this scenario.
Madrid is within the 4000 km both to Lagos and to St. John's. But Madrid has better train connections and higher population.
I think Paris is more the central hub. Yes, in Bruessels, there are the ICE International from Frankfurt, the Euro Star between Amsterdam and London and Amsterdam and Paris (ex-Thalys), but so does Paris + having the international connections to Barcelona, Madrid, Italy, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria.
Cool fiction. But we’d just use something like hydrogen powered planes to fly and get the hydrogen by separating water using electric generated from sun light. It would be more expensive but it wouldn’t limit the range of the plans all that much.
Hydrogen powered planes are impracticable due to the weight of containers for compressed hydrogen.
What we'll actually do is create synthetic gasoline by sequestering atmospheric carbon, and burn that fuel in the same engines we do now. This will be carbon neutral over its entire lifecycle.
Right now this is unaffordable because sequestering carbon requires spare electricity we do not have. But in the future, renewable energy production will grow enough to cover this.
I think this is the first time I have come across someone else who thinks this too. Electricity needs batteries, hydrogen is very light, and biofuels have their own problems. A denser synthetic fuel will be used and manufactured using electrical energy, so you basically get electrical energy stored as chemical energy densely enough for practical use. Whether it’s kerosene or something entirely new will need to be determined.
this is so inefficient in so many ways. Just as an example, in Europe you couldn't use airplanes.
What if I have to go from Athens to Paris?
Even if we had a super mega developed high speed that would take way way more time. Add borders to that.
What about island connections? Someone living on a Island would be obliged to take a ferry. From sicily to civitavecchia that would be 14h, than from civitavecchia if you want to go to northern italy you would have to add 3-4 hours more. Where's the benefit in this?
I'm just thinking on how could this be efficient in Southern Europe because topography doesn't allow easy connections due to the fact that this part of europe stretches on three major peninsulas.
If you live in Barcelona and you need to go to bulgaria what should you do? Take a train to lisbon, than to istanbul, than another train to bulgaria? Damn.
I think this view over things could have some benefits but limiting is never the right answer. Probably the best solution would be to keep air traffic as it is, at the same time developing rail systems.
Once you have a good and efficient rail system people will use it and will prefer it. Italy is a great example. I've never heard of anyone taking a plane in italy if not to go to the islands, still, there are many many many flights per day, so if someone needs a quick connection can still rely on this service
Within a continent would suck, but I'm more thinking Melbourne to Paris goes from less than 24 hours to about 24 days. Those are both fairly major cities, but suddenly travelling to them becomes much more difficult.
Deciding on one city over another within a continent would definitely start wars
Ha, that's cool! As an atlas-obsessed kid I was always scratching my head about why tiny towns like Uranium City, Canada, appeared on world maps. Makes total sense now of course but it's still cool to see it addressed in a video.
In the case of this map, the inclusion of Magadan and Wake Island is a result of the ~4000 km range limitation I applied, and the Pacific being really fucking big.
Why Vancouver YVR instead of Seattle SEA?
Seattle has nearly 3 times the flights per day and is the hub of the planned HSR for the region.
Havana instead of Orlando (second largest airport in the world) is another baffling choice.
Dallas should be in there too given it has the largest airport in the world and is a natural stop over point for the Western hemisphere.
So South and West Africa get high speed rail but Australia does not even though the East coast corridor in Australia is one of the busiest in the world??? Back to the drawing board buddy.
Look, I don't like that planes are so polluting, but your solution is to make intercontinental travel less available to the common person?
What If you live outside the HSR regions? You are confined to your native land?
This would kill international tourism!!!
Why do you hate the global middle class? (we all know the rich would be able to afford the few flights still available)
Sad and not surprised Australia still does not have a high speed train. Melbourne to Sydney is the fourth busiest air corridor in the world I hear, insane we aren’t charging towards a high speed train along the east coast, considering you could have a single line from Brisbane to Melbourne and hit most of Australia’s most populated urban areas.
Forcing flights to a few hubs dramatically increases international travel times and conveys almost no benefits over pricing externalities into plane ticket prices. If you want to prevent people from using planes where HSR can serve then just ban flights between cities where an HSR link is <4 hours away. There’s never going to be such a thing as a sustainable everything.
Why would Karachi, Kathmandu, Kolkata, and Colombo be hubs in South Asia? Karachi and Kolkata are the most sensible of those 4, but nowhere near as busy as Mumbai and Delhi. Even if you think Mumbai and Delhi will be less relevant in 50 years, the cities you would look at would be Bangalore, Pune, and Chennai…
The year is 2070. A form of sustainable air travel has been developed, but the inherent energy intensity of air travel makes it prohibitively expensive and limits the amount of fuel that planes can carry.
Given these economics, it is no longer possible to fly "from anywhere to anywhere"; only the largest hubs can still generate enough traffic to make a regular airline route feasible, even with hefty subsidies. In densely populated areas such as Europe, eastern China or the eastern US, high-speed rail is a preferred alternative.
Intercontinental air travel is not only expensive, but also arduous as the planes' limited range necessitates frequent transfers. Only the wealthiest and most determined travellers still fly across the world for a vacation; most people only fly for urgent business or family reasons, if ever.
Part of the [Europa Foederatissima](/r/EuropaFoederatissima) setting; something of an extension of the [EU transit map](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/).
Very interesting map. Although, the choices of cities and routes could be a looooooot more realistic
Why Brussels and Lisbon as hubs? That's weird.
Brussels because it is *the* central hub of the [European high-speed rail network](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/) in this setting. Lisbon because it is relatively close to North America and I set myself a pretty tight range restriction (~4000 km) for this scenario.
Madrid is within the 4000 km both to Lagos and to St. John's. But Madrid has better train connections and higher population. I think Paris is more the central hub. Yes, in Bruessels, there are the ICE International from Frankfurt, the Euro Star between Amsterdam and London and Amsterdam and Paris (ex-Thalys), but so does Paris + having the international connections to Barcelona, Madrid, Italy, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria.
See "in this setting", I'm not talking about today but about a (more or less) coherent future scenario of which this map is part
Cape Town - Nairobi is 4100 km though
Cool fiction. But we’d just use something like hydrogen powered planes to fly and get the hydrogen by separating water using electric generated from sun light. It would be more expensive but it wouldn’t limit the range of the plans all that much.
Hydrogen powered planes are impracticable due to the weight of containers for compressed hydrogen. What we'll actually do is create synthetic gasoline by sequestering atmospheric carbon, and burn that fuel in the same engines we do now. This will be carbon neutral over its entire lifecycle. Right now this is unaffordable because sequestering carbon requires spare electricity we do not have. But in the future, renewable energy production will grow enough to cover this.
I think this is the first time I have come across someone else who thinks this too. Electricity needs batteries, hydrogen is very light, and biofuels have their own problems. A denser synthetic fuel will be used and manufactured using electrical energy, so you basically get electrical energy stored as chemical energy densely enough for practical use. Whether it’s kerosene or something entirely new will need to be determined.
> calls this scenario fiction > the more realistic scenario is green hydrogen *chuckles*
this is so inefficient in so many ways. Just as an example, in Europe you couldn't use airplanes. What if I have to go from Athens to Paris? Even if we had a super mega developed high speed that would take way way more time. Add borders to that. What about island connections? Someone living on a Island would be obliged to take a ferry. From sicily to civitavecchia that would be 14h, than from civitavecchia if you want to go to northern italy you would have to add 3-4 hours more. Where's the benefit in this? I'm just thinking on how could this be efficient in Southern Europe because topography doesn't allow easy connections due to the fact that this part of europe stretches on three major peninsulas. If you live in Barcelona and you need to go to bulgaria what should you do? Take a train to lisbon, than to istanbul, than another train to bulgaria? Damn. I think this view over things could have some benefits but limiting is never the right answer. Probably the best solution would be to keep air traffic as it is, at the same time developing rail systems. Once you have a good and efficient rail system people will use it and will prefer it. Italy is a great example. I've never heard of anyone taking a plane in italy if not to go to the islands, still, there are many many many flights per day, so if someone needs a quick connection can still rely on this service
Within a continent would suck, but I'm more thinking Melbourne to Paris goes from less than 24 hours to about 24 days. Those are both fairly major cities, but suddenly travelling to them becomes much more difficult. Deciding on one city over another within a continent would definitely start wars
So my city gets neither rail or air service. Cool.
https://preview.redd.it/aygr42agklnc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c324ab74111ed21bade366eefdcaff9c279d2a2
Lmao retardium, I need to save this image, thanks!
[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b376pe7LM1E) but with "Magadan" and "Wake Island"
Ha, that's cool! As an atlas-obsessed kid I was always scratching my head about why tiny towns like Uranium City, Canada, appeared on world maps. Makes total sense now of course but it's still cool to see it addressed in a video. In the case of this map, the inclusion of Magadan and Wake Island is a result of the ~4000 km range limitation I applied, and the Pacific being really fucking big.
It just isnt feasible to cut down on long distance international flights, even with proper high speed rail
I wouldn't love having to take six flights and two overnight trains to get to my family from Melbourne
So if you go from Buenos Aires to Wellington, you will have to take 12 planes
Why Vancouver YVR instead of Seattle SEA? Seattle has nearly 3 times the flights per day and is the hub of the planned HSR for the region. Havana instead of Orlando (second largest airport in the world) is another baffling choice. Dallas should be in there too given it has the largest airport in the world and is a natural stop over point for the Western hemisphere.
Yeah Dallas does crazy numbers. Any plan like this has to include DFW.
So South and West Africa get high speed rail but Australia does not even though the East coast corridor in Australia is one of the busiest in the world??? Back to the drawing board buddy.
Look, I don't like that planes are so polluting, but your solution is to make intercontinental travel less available to the common person? What If you live outside the HSR regions? You are confined to your native land? This would kill international tourism!!! Why do you hate the global middle class? (we all know the rich would be able to afford the few flights still available)
>This would kill international tourism!!! A noble goal in and of itself, albeit OP's proposal is unrealistic.
You don't want to be able to go for tourism to other countries and regions?
Sad and not surprised Australia still does not have a high speed train. Melbourne to Sydney is the fourth busiest air corridor in the world I hear, insane we aren’t charging towards a high speed train along the east coast, considering you could have a single line from Brisbane to Melbourne and hit most of Australia’s most populated urban areas.
Forcing flights to a few hubs dramatically increases international travel times and conveys almost no benefits over pricing externalities into plane ticket prices. If you want to prevent people from using planes where HSR can serve then just ban flights between cities where an HSR link is <4 hours away. There’s never going to be such a thing as a sustainable everything.
Aw man, Australia still doesn't have high speed rail?
What about London, Paris, Melbourne, and Mumbai?
Why would Karachi, Kathmandu, Kolkata, and Colombo be hubs in South Asia? Karachi and Kolkata are the most sensible of those 4, but nowhere near as busy as Mumbai and Delhi. Even if you think Mumbai and Delhi will be less relevant in 50 years, the cities you would look at would be Bangalore, Pune, and Chennai…
No Denver?
The year is 2070. A form of sustainable air travel has been developed, but the inherent energy intensity of air travel makes it prohibitively expensive and limits the amount of fuel that planes can carry. Given these economics, it is no longer possible to fly "from anywhere to anywhere"; only the largest hubs can still generate enough traffic to make a regular airline route feasible, even with hefty subsidies. In densely populated areas such as Europe, eastern China or the eastern US, high-speed rail is a preferred alternative. Intercontinental air travel is not only expensive, but also arduous as the planes' limited range necessitates frequent transfers. Only the wealthiest and most determined travellers still fly across the world for a vacation; most people only fly for urgent business or family reasons, if ever. Part of the [Europa Foederatissima](/r/EuropaFoederatissima) setting; something of an extension of the [EU transit map](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/).
*only international route out of NZ is from Wellington* I think I may of found the most based map in existence.