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Comment by clarry | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how they planned to route from Stockholm to Helsinki. Going around the gulf is a damn long sidetrack (1700 kilometers).

I feel rather disconnected from central Europe since the only practical way to get there involves flight or ship or a detour via St. Petersburg. On that front, this seems like an interesting project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki%E2%80%93Tallinn_Tunne...

I'd love to take a cozy train to hamsterdamn.

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Going via Åland is definitely practicable--the eastern side is about 80-90 km of shallow sea, which means you need basically a series of trestle bridges similar to the Florida Overseas Railroad (which was 200 km end-to-end). The western side is more difficult, since it's 40km at its narrowest point, which is slightly longer than the Channel Tunnel, and most of the sea appears to be about 200-300m deep. But if you detour around a bit more to the north, you could again use a trestle bridge for most of it, and use a large bridge only to cross the deepest portion of it.

The point is crossing via Åland is firmly in the category of "we've crossed these kinds of gaps before."

A fixed link via Åland (if at all seriously considered) would not open within 30 years [imho, based on previous projects].

And it probably would be expensive enough that funding might be impossible to secure. It's not like it'd be an enabler for some sort of massive economic activity.

Shame we don't have a Musk to start The Suspending Company.

Maybe not related to this, but some time ago there were some thoughts about Hyperloop between Stockholm and Helsinki [1].

[1] https://hyperloop-one.com/fs-links-case-study

I am also very interested to know their solution to link Helsinki to Stockholm by train. It would be nice also to hear about this project from other sources too.

Anyway, having even just a Stockholm-Amsterdam night train would be great. But unfortunately I am not very optimistic on that...

probably the idea is to put people (or traincars!) onto a ferry and then go to Helsinki harbour. That's not as hasslefree but still ok, even if it makes the journey a very long one for finns. alternatively, one could build a rail through the baltic states, linking up with the Berlin-Moscow trains in Poland.

There is also an option to take Stockholm-Turku ferry (10 hours overnight) and Turku-Helsinki train (2 hours).

I remember reading about ideas of a hyperloop tunnel between Stockholm and Helsinki a few years ago, that would be something! I would go to Finland more if that was a thing. Or just a regular underwater train tunnel! One can dream ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Aw, second... Stared too long at the map to figure out the best route and took too long to post.

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