Editorial|Editorial
The European Commission’s proposal for narrowing the track spacing of the railway network is absurd from Finland’s point of view. However, it is not worth knocking it out of hand, because in the future a uniform track width could be useful.
European the commission wants to unify the track width so that the same trains can pass through Europe. For Finland, the Commission’s demand would mean a narrowing of train tracks, as all new rail connections would have to be adjusted to the European standard.
Now Europe runs on two tracks and Finland is on a side track. The European track width is 1,435 millimeters. Finnish tracks are wider, 1,524 millimeters wide. This is close to the gauge of Russian railways.
The Minister of Transport and Communications, Timo Harakka (sd), immediately rejected the Commission’s proposal to change Finland’s track width as unreasonable.
It is an absurd idea that Finland should build new train tracks and change the equipment and some of the existing tracks to be ten centimeters narrower than the current ones. This is hardly going to happen. Finland will have the opportunity to opt out of the unification of track gauges, because it does not make economic sense (HS 3.8.).
It is a change to the proposal for EU guidelines for the trans-European transport network that the Commission already made earlier. The changing world situation, especially Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, has brought to the fore the rail network problem. Grain transport from Ukraine has been made more difficult by the fact that the railway tracks are wider than in Europe in general.
Wider there are also tracks in, for example, the Baltics and Spain and Portugal. Ireland’s track width also differs from the rest of Europe, but the Commission is not proposing any changes. There are no land connections from the island nation to the rest of the continent.
According to Europeans, Finland is also an island. Exports are almost entirely carried out by ships.
Thinking about the future, there is another side to the matter. Major railway openings include the tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn and the Arctic Railway. Uniform track gauges on a European scale would be beneficial in those cases. The presentation of the new tracks should not be completely and definitively rejected outright.
The editorials are HS’s positions on a current topic. The articles are prepared by HS’s editorial department, and they reflect the magazine principle line.
#Editorial #Europe #runs #tracks
