Connecting Central Europe, North to South

Large-scale road and rail projects aim to facilitate travel from the south of Italy all the way up to Sweden and Finland.

1 minute read

April 4, 2018, 5:00 AM PDT

By Casey Brazeal @northandclark


Swiss Federal Railways

Daniel Friedlos / Flickr

Central Europe has a number of borders and natural choke points that can make traveling difficult. "With their tightly interlinked shipping lanes and industrial supply chains, Copenhagen and Hamburg are already one economy in many senses. But getting between them is a hassle," according to an article in The Economist. Another hassle waits in crossing the Austrian and Swiss Alps, but projects including a Brenner Tunnel are bringing trains under the Alps to make this travel easier than it's ever been before.

The split between Eastern and Western Europe might be famous, but from a geographic perspective the split between northern and southern Europe is more pronounced, The Economist argues. "It is soluble. But the continent’s north-south rift is in many ways deeper: it involves intransigent barriers like high mountains and foaming seas, as well as deep cultural and economic differences. In its own way, the Malmo-Palermo express would be as great a political achievement as its Paris-Moscow counterpart," The Economist contends.

Thursday, March 22, 2018 in The Economist

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