European governments shrinking railways in favour of road-building

I don&#x27;t think you can argue exactly that Switzerland is prefering road expansion instead of rail. There is still an enormous amount spent on rail but the huge NEAT investment is done and now some failing old road tunnels are in need of work and the costs are tremendous.<p>One such tunnel requires building a 3rd because closing one of the two for x years is economicaly worse for the country than building the 3rd. The 3rd tunnel however will be closed at the end of construction and can not be used to expand capacity. It will be a service tunnel only.<p>Also Switzerland just presented their 2035 [1] and 2050 [2] rail plans. The 2035 plan alone includes several new tunnels and new&#x2F;upgrades to rail stations. The expansion at Zürich Stadelhofen alone is estimated at 1.1 billion Swiss francs and that is not the main train station in Zürich. Zürich Hartbrücke also need to be upgraded and is estimated over triple digit millions as well.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;company.sbb.ch&#x2F;de&#x2F;ueber-die-sbb&#x2F;projekte&#x2F;nationale-programme&#x2F;step-as-2035.html&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;company.sbb.ch&#x2F;de&#x2F;ueber-die-sbb&#x2F;projekte&#x2F;nationale-p...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bav.admin.ch&#x2F;bav&#x2F;de&#x2F;home&#x2F;verkehrsmittel&#x2F;eisenbahn&#x2F;bahninfrastruktur&#x2F;ausbauprogramme&#x2F;perspektive-bahn-2050.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bav.admin.ch&#x2F;bav&#x2F;de&#x2F;home&#x2F;verkehrsmittel&#x2F;eisenbah...</a>

Being in the US, it’s a shame these countries are making this same mistake. I’m probably warped being in Gen Z, but cars&#x2F;car-centric infrastructure seem like a fundamental mistake, and a shameful investment. Everyone should have a right to walkability, and frankly in my experience, cities without it feel substantially less pleasant. Having good inner-city transit and inner&#x2F;inter-city rail makes places feel so much nicer and more developed.<p>Obviously, cities with good transit are substantially rarer and probably far worse maintained in the US than Europe, so I’m sure Europe is in an overall far better spot with it - but I struggle to understand the appeal of developing against walkability and transit-ability in 2023.

&gt;At the same time, the report found, European governments had shut down more than 2,500 train stations since the mid-90s. They also closed about 8,523 miles (13,717 km) of regional passenger railway lines.<p>Yea but how much of that was the &quot;people all moved to the cities leaving villages to rot away&quot; problem that other countries face including Japan and the US? Europe was very much and still has many scattered villages and small towns in each country that are disappearing as time goes on. They had trains, people used them to move and leave grandma&#x2F;grandpa on their farms.

I’ve said this for a long time: rail infrastructure is just too expensive to be worth it, with a small number of exceptions (Japan for example). Even people in Europe prefer to fly or drive because of costs.

That&#x27;s a shame