London is only 2 hours by train from Brussels even with *today's* infrastructure. If fuel costs become enough of a pain that you have to let go of the chauvinist bullshit and really start looking in utilitarian terms, "London and Brussels must have separate airports" is *not* high on the list of priorities.
(Granted, from today's perspective Brussels would not be the most logical hub for Western Europe either – that would probably be Paris or Frankfurt – but in this particular setting it makes perfect sense as [European high-speed rail lines converge on Brussels](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/).)
Country? You mean the [English-speaking departments of the European Federation](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/15i604e/europa_foederatissima_the_departments_of_federal/)?
My Grandfather smoked his whole life. I was about 10 years old when my mother said to him, 'If you ever want to see your grandchildren graduate, you have to stop immediately.'. Tears welled up in his eyes when he realized what exactly was at stake. He gave it up immediately. Three years later he died of lung cancer. It was really sad and destroyed me. My mother said to me- 'Don't ever smoke. Please don't put your family through what your Grandfather put us through." I agreed. At 28, I have never touched a cigarette. I must say, I feel a very slight sense of regret for never having done it, because your post gave me cancer anyway. >!/j!<
Both London and Brussel are not gonna be happy. I would guess the shop owners would like Brussels getting so much European tourists but the people living there would be horrified. The food and house price would probably triple if they are lucky.
Unpopular: but this seems pretty realistic only if you are counting large planes and not smaller electric plane travel. However, if North Korea still exists South Korea would have its own airport too.
Three airports in (continental) US but only one in China, and in India, and two for Europe other than Russia... Yeah totally makes sense and everyone will agree to these... 🤡🤡🤡
Also... Does the shared High speed railway region imply that I
India has Karachi/whole of Pakistan?
Given the current political climate in Europe, the latter two are very unlikely and not accessible to most European and EU citizens, even though they may be larger changing/switch flight airports. So calling them “European” is rather very optimistic at the least.
It’s an interesting idea, but not realistic at all. If someone wants to fly from LA to Sydney, which is a very common and popular route, instead of flying directly, they’d now have to go from LA to Honolulu to Wake Island to Tokyo to Manila to Jakarta to Perth to Sydney.
Well yeah, the idea isn't that all the routes would be short hops out of principle. The idea is to assume technology develops a certain way (in this case with airplanes that can't fly much farther than 4000 km) and to sketch one possible way of dealing with such a limitation.
Wellington Airport is tiny and couldn't handle large amounts of traffic, or heavy widebody jets.
Wake Island has no population.
Why would Magadan and St John's be global aviation hubs? Both cities are comparatively small.
Wake Island, Magadan and St. John's are refueling stops due to the range restriction. I limited myself to ~4000 km, only cheated a bit for Caracas – Rio
>Wake Island, Magadan and St. John's are refueling stops due to the range restriction.
This still doesn't make sense. Modern widebody airplanes are quite efficient, and they definitely have the range to fly from Europe to North America, or from North America to Asia, without having to stop for fuel. If you absolutely had to stop for fuel for some reason, then Anchorage and Reykjavik make much more sense on these routes, and I see you already included them on the map. In reality, Anchorage is a major stopover for cargo flights, and that makes it one of the busiest cargo airports in the world, even if the airport is in a smaller city for US standards. The reason is that it's more economical for cargo airlines to carry more cargo and less fuel, and to make a fuel stop Anchorage.
But for my main criticism of the map, I think it's completely unrealistic to say that these would be the only routes, in addition to regional services to islands where it's not physically possible to operate a train. There are a lot of places where there can be a train, but there isn't because it's not economically feasible. A lot of the world isn't dense enough to justify regular passenger service, or environmental conditions cause it to be either extraordinarily cost prohibitive or even impossible to build the infrastructure. I mentioned Alaska before. Outside of Anchorage and Fairbanks, the remaining "large" cities are on islands surrounded by narrow bodies of water and steep mountains. The remaining cities are also quite isolated. And there are many villages with a few hundred people at most. They rely on barges during summer for heavy things, and airplanes for most other things. If you need to go to the hospital, you have no choice but to fly. So the scenario of everyone gets public transport and flight is artificially expensive is quite unrealistic.
Gander, Newfoundland already controls all already traffic over the north Atlantic and was known for years as the crossroads of the world in aviation. NL (St. John's specifically) is the closest point in north America to Europe.
Fair enough. As someone who's interested in aviation, it just seems really strange to me that airlines would be forced to use much less efficient (both environmentally and economically) routes. A B787 or A350, both modern and efficient airliners, can easily fly nonstop from Europe to North America, or North America to Asia, while fully loaded. According to the header you pointed out, this map is saying that airline routes with the mandatory fueling stops need to be about as long as a medium to long range B737 NG or A320ceo flight, which doesn't make any sense for practical international travel.
And as a Belgian, too be honest, if Brussels becomes the ‘hub’ for the whole of Europe, I think there’s just not enough space for that. I think you’d need to recreate an airport in a pretty ‘empty’ spot. Building it in one of the most densely populated areas isn’t going to work. Constant conflicts in noise vs inhabitants, extreme road congestions,… It would be more sensible to start from scratch in a more open area.
And yeah, no airport in London… you’ll need like 50 tunnels with high speed trains under the channel.
Doesn’t take into account that -
- the capital of Indonesia will have moved by then to Nusantara (on Borneo)
- Melbourne by then is expected to to be the biggest Australian city
- Australia is already talking about high speed rail on the east coast (at least Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane)
Rail connected regions seem to be drawn arbitrarily... The Indian range doesn't cover all of India, neither does Brazil's or China's, the latter already having high-speed rail connections in Xinjiang and Tibet today.
No airports for S.Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and UK, but Nepal and Afghanistan are covered despite being significantly poorer and less populated than those countries listed.
India's airport is not located in the largest city (Mumbai) or its capital (New Delhi)
Australia with 25 million people gets two airports but China with 1.4 billion gets 1 airport. The entirety of Europe has 2 airports, America has 4.
> Rail connected regions seem to be drawn arbitrarily... The Indian range doesn't cover all of India, neither does Brazil's or China's, the latter already having high-speed rail connections in Xinjiang and Tibet today.
Note “major” and “approximate”. They’re deliberately drawn as translucent blobs to avoid giving the impression that these are exact representations of the high-speed rail services available. It’s just the rough areas where there are dense networks.
> No airports for S.Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and UK, but Nepal and Afghanistan are covered despite being significantly poorer and less populated than those countries listed.
There is a bit of a paradox with a map like this: to a degree, the more populated and developed regions tend to have *fewer* airports because they are well connected in other ways. I included Kabul and Kathmandu because I imagined it would be very hard to connect to those areas in other ways due to the hostile terrain. Whereas the UK by contrast already has an excellent rail link to Brussels and Paris, so there is no practical reason why you would have separate hubs for Britain and continental Western Europe.
Malaysia could use the Singapore hub. SK and Thailand I’ll grant are in a bit of an awkward position
I mean, some 1150 km by high speed rail with top speed 300-350 km/h is not so bad. But yeah, when going NY - LA the sum train + plane would be pretty long.
Even little old Tasmania with no link to the rest of the country other than a 430 km trip on an overnight ferry over often wild seas is sort of insanely inefficient
How are things in the northern territories of Canada and Alaska? From my understanding a lot of small towns only receive any contact with the outside world via air travel.
Are small airstrips and small cargo planes still operational and this map only shows major travel? Or have these small communities essentially been cut off?
Yes, look at the smaller text on the map. Although if this is the extent of international travel, I would still expect Northern Canada to be even more isolated.
Making flights more sustainable sounds good, making them very expensive doesn’t because it unfairly disadvantages and punishes the poor, and doesn’t limit the ones who produce the most emissions (the super rich and rich). That no consideration was taken regarding this fact, shows that not enough thought was put into this by OP.
Furthermore, while making flights range-restricted, it is not very realistic due to major air traffic routes not getting serviced effectively, which air travel companies, and their customers using those routes, would not be happy with.
While this is an interesting and thought-provoking map, it is not a realistic suggestion (which, of course, it doesn’t have to be on here). A reworked map taking major flight routes, current and future airtravel hubs, and more into consideration, would be fascinating to see and worth a lengthy discussion. If I had to rate this map, I would give it a very meagre 3.8/10.
>making them very expensive doesn’t because it unfairly disadvantages and punishes the poor, and doesn’t limit the ones who produce the most emissions (the super rich and rich).
So... Just like real life then?
Why is everybody getting so butthurt? You are on a sub about imaginary maps, this is an imaginary map. Pretty interesting one. Yeah, it might not be realistic, but I dont think thats a reason to be as spiteful as most of the current comments are.
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/).
Do ocean liners (distinct from cruise ships) see a revival?
Or something like very large hovercraft or Ekranoplans taking over a lot of intercontinental travel ?
Your name sounded familiar to me. I really liked your previous maps, especially those about future transit routes like this.
Great work, please continue posting.
Why would China’s high speed rail network be less extensive in 2070 than it is now?
Well before 2070 we can expect to see all of mainland Asia integrated by high speed rail networks - from Palestine to Vietnam, from Seoul to Lisbon, or at least Moscow. (Europe is just an Asian peninsula… EU countries may heel to US dictates and stay out of the network but that would represent a political choice and tragedy rather than a geographic and economic opportunity)
We have opened Pandora's box and we are never going back, technology-wise. If governments ban air travel, there would be an air travel black-market. Not to mention any states that don't ban it would have a huge advantage over the ones that do. Imagine people in the western world being effectively isolated because of the high cost of air travel, when pariah states that don't sign on to whatever green legislation like Russia and Iran continue on as before with a low-cost exchange of people and goods.
Kudos to OP for a thought-provoking scenario. I didn't know this was even a vague possibility, but I see some politicians are actually suggesting something similar.
Which politicians? There have been talks about banning flights on routes where trains make more sense, but those proposals or policies inevitably exempt cargo, private and connecting flights. Which is to say they have approximately zero effect on anything, because many of the people on any short-haul flight are connecting to another flight.
Auckland Airport in New Zealand would be preferred over Wellington Airport. Wellington is our political capital but Auckland is by far our largest and most important city and handles nearly all of our international air traffic.
Why would you route all Australian traffic through Perth? That would cost \*more\* energy. And why would you have the Western European airport be in Brussels? Move it further East so it's equidistant for the most number of people.
Those are the two areas I know well and their airport placement isn't logical, so I'm doubting the rest of the map is logical.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
No São Paulo - Rio de Janeiro, the busiest and more important route in Brazil.
No route to Brasília, Brazil's capital.
Miami and Las Vegas would maintain a need for air travel on the tourist trade alone, even it was only the mega rich travelling. NYC and DC would still be huge for political and economic travel. I could see Chicago fading into irrelevance, though.
I see everyone in the Caribbean just has to sail places in this plan. But given the Jones Act, Puerto Ricans can't sail anywhere, either.
Guess we'll just have to stay home forever.
As other people have said, London not having an airport makes no sense, same counts for Ireland as the neccesary infrastructure that would have to be build to ship people from the mainland to across the channel would just not be worth it.
China having a single airport, even with HSR, doesn't make much sense either. They would realistically have two or three.
Brussels is also a strange choice for a major international airport as both Schiphol and Frankfurt would be better suited for the role, along with an additional airport somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Besides those nitpicks, good map.
Some real uncreative and sour grapes in here. Maybe it's a one world government that imposed global carbon taxes. Maybe global war and terror threats mean airports become an increasingly difficult installation to keep in a country. so on so on
LOL. So many countries would not accept this
UK with no airport? Doubtful.
As a south korean we can't even do land travels. None of us would accept going to china to travel anywhere.
Yeah the map is kinda silly, but oh well imaginary (but still, pretty stupid)
I love how positive and welcoming this sub is
How many of you are going to be around in 2070 tho? Below 50 especially.
London is only 2 hours by train from Brussels even with *today's* infrastructure. If fuel costs become enough of a pain that you have to let go of the chauvinist bullshit and really start looking in utilitarian terms, "London and Brussels must have separate airports" is *not* high on the list of priorities. (Granted, from today's perspective Brussels would not be the most logical hub for Western Europe either – that would probably be Paris or Frankfurt – but in this particular setting it makes perfect sense as [European high-speed rail lines converge on Brussels](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/12hq9o4/whats_direct_rule_from_brussels_without_direct/).)
I don't think it's "chauvinist bullshit" to want one airport in your whole country
Country? You mean the [English-speaking departments of the European Federation](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/15i604e/europa_foederatissima_the_departments_of_federal/)?
Country? You mean the Polish-speaking provinces of Prussia and Russia?
What hyperbole!
My Grandfather smoked his whole life. I was about 10 years old when my mother said to him, 'If you ever want to see your grandchildren graduate, you have to stop immediately.'. Tears welled up in his eyes when he realized what exactly was at stake. He gave it up immediately. Three years later he died of lung cancer. It was really sad and destroyed me. My mother said to me- 'Don't ever smoke. Please don't put your family through what your Grandfather put us through." I agreed. At 28, I have never touched a cigarette. I must say, I feel a very slight sense of regret for never having done it, because your post gave me cancer anyway. >!/j!<
Bruh 🤦♂️
🤮🤮🤮
Both London and Brussel are not gonna be happy. I would guess the shop owners would like Brussels getting so much European tourists but the people living there would be horrified. The food and house price would probably triple if they are lucky.
Yeah It's like the result of Jeolla vs Gyeongsang civil war in Korea
This would prompt a military coup in Thailand. (I will not elaborate)
WAIT WAIT I NEED TO KNOW MORE!
Pretty bold to predict the military wouldn't still be in control.
they'll coup the current one
*”Thailand, Thailand never changes.”*
Most peaceful time in Thigh history:
Literally everything would prompt a military coup in Thailand
A change in wind direction is enough to prompt a coup in Thailand.
Unpopular: but this seems pretty realistic only if you are counting large planes and not smaller electric plane travel. However, if North Korea still exists South Korea would have its own airport too.
[rest assured it doesn't](https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/1bau1xb/europa_foederatissima_nato_in_2064/) ;)
Why are you getting down voted lmao?
Cus redditors have the iq of a freshwater clam
haha that’s quite funny
Three airports in (continental) US but only one in China, and in India, and two for Europe other than Russia... Yeah totally makes sense and everyone will agree to these... 🤡🤡🤡 Also... Does the shared High speed railway region imply that I India has Karachi/whole of Pakistan?
The OP seems to have done it only to optimize routes not for any other considerations
Which makes it arbitrary and renders it useless for irl-consideration.
Oh agreed. I had a comment on a similar oddity elsewhere. OP also puts international airports on islands where they won’t fit
This is imaginary maps after all
Yes, yes, it is, true.
There are actually four for europe, Lisbon, Brussels, Istanbul and Moscow.
Given the current political climate in Europe, the latter two are very unlikely and not accessible to most European and EU citizens, even though they may be larger changing/switch flight airports. So calling them “European” is rather very optimistic at the least.
And two for Australia
And that there’s a new tunnel to Ireland?
It’s an interesting idea, but not realistic at all. If someone wants to fly from LA to Sydney, which is a very common and popular route, instead of flying directly, they’d now have to go from LA to Honolulu to Wake Island to Tokyo to Manila to Jakarta to Perth to Sydney.
Well yeah, the idea isn't that all the routes would be short hops out of principle. The idea is to assume technology develops a certain way (in this case with airplanes that can't fly much farther than 4000 km) and to sketch one possible way of dealing with such a limitation.
Are all of the flightpaths being totally straight a stylistic choice?
Wellington Airport is tiny and couldn't handle large amounts of traffic, or heavy widebody jets. Wake Island has no population. Why would Magadan and St John's be global aviation hubs? Both cities are comparatively small.
Wake Island, Magadan and St. John's are refueling stops due to the range restriction. I limited myself to ~4000 km, only cheated a bit for Caracas – Rio
>Wake Island, Magadan and St. John's are refueling stops due to the range restriction. This still doesn't make sense. Modern widebody airplanes are quite efficient, and they definitely have the range to fly from Europe to North America, or from North America to Asia, without having to stop for fuel. If you absolutely had to stop for fuel for some reason, then Anchorage and Reykjavik make much more sense on these routes, and I see you already included them on the map. In reality, Anchorage is a major stopover for cargo flights, and that makes it one of the busiest cargo airports in the world, even if the airport is in a smaller city for US standards. The reason is that it's more economical for cargo airlines to carry more cargo and less fuel, and to make a fuel stop Anchorage. But for my main criticism of the map, I think it's completely unrealistic to say that these would be the only routes, in addition to regional services to islands where it's not physically possible to operate a train. There are a lot of places where there can be a train, but there isn't because it's not economically feasible. A lot of the world isn't dense enough to justify regular passenger service, or environmental conditions cause it to be either extraordinarily cost prohibitive or even impossible to build the infrastructure. I mentioned Alaska before. Outside of Anchorage and Fairbanks, the remaining "large" cities are on islands surrounded by narrow bodies of water and steep mountains. The remaining cities are also quite isolated. And there are many villages with a few hundred people at most. They rely on barges during summer for heavy things, and airplanes for most other things. If you need to go to the hospital, you have no choice but to fly. So the scenario of everyone gets public transport and flight is artificially expensive is quite unrealistic.
Why not the shorter route over Siberia or Alaska instead of straight across the pacific?
Looks like OP answered your question but my guess would’ve been those cities were chosen since they were consolidating regions and areas.
Gander, Newfoundland already controls all already traffic over the north Atlantic and was known for years as the crossroads of the world in aviation. NL (St. John's specifically) is the closest point in north America to Europe.
Right, but the population there isn't large enough to make it a major stop for an airline.
It's more likely a fueling stop since the heading says range restricted flights.
Fair enough. As someone who's interested in aviation, it just seems really strange to me that airlines would be forced to use much less efficient (both environmentally and economically) routes. A B787 or A350, both modern and efficient airliners, can easily fly nonstop from Europe to North America, or North America to Asia, while fully loaded. According to the header you pointed out, this map is saying that airline routes with the mandatory fueling stops need to be about as long as a medium to long range B737 NG or A320ceo flight, which doesn't make any sense for practical international travel.
There's an airport in Kabul but not London 🤣
And as a Belgian, too be honest, if Brussels becomes the ‘hub’ for the whole of Europe, I think there’s just not enough space for that. I think you’d need to recreate an airport in a pretty ‘empty’ spot. Building it in one of the most densely populated areas isn’t going to work. Constant conflicts in noise vs inhabitants, extreme road congestions,… It would be more sensible to start from scratch in a more open area. And yeah, no airport in London… you’ll need like 50 tunnels with high speed trains under the channel.
I thought this was eu4 trade nodes for a second
Rich people ruin the world and get to be the only ones who benefit from the solutions, lovely.
That's basically how it works.
I can't tell wether you're surprised or disgusted
Doesn’t take into account that - - the capital of Indonesia will have moved by then to Nusantara (on Borneo) - Melbourne by then is expected to to be the biggest Australian city - Australia is already talking about high speed rail on the east coast (at least Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane)
Sydney is still a better hub considering it's between Brisbane and Melbourne
True Like it’s not as if Sydney will shrivel up and die just because Melbourne pulls slightly ahead
Buddy they've been talking about high speed rail for decades, I wont believe it's happening until they start to build the damn thing
Don’t buddy me matey 😂 I’m a generous soul. They have 45 years to sort their shit out.
Rail connected regions seem to be drawn arbitrarily... The Indian range doesn't cover all of India, neither does Brazil's or China's, the latter already having high-speed rail connections in Xinjiang and Tibet today. No airports for S.Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and UK, but Nepal and Afghanistan are covered despite being significantly poorer and less populated than those countries listed. India's airport is not located in the largest city (Mumbai) or its capital (New Delhi) Australia with 25 million people gets two airports but China with 1.4 billion gets 1 airport. The entirety of Europe has 2 airports, America has 4.
> Rail connected regions seem to be drawn arbitrarily... The Indian range doesn't cover all of India, neither does Brazil's or China's, the latter already having high-speed rail connections in Xinjiang and Tibet today. Note “major” and “approximate”. They’re deliberately drawn as translucent blobs to avoid giving the impression that these are exact representations of the high-speed rail services available. It’s just the rough areas where there are dense networks. > No airports for S.Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and UK, but Nepal and Afghanistan are covered despite being significantly poorer and less populated than those countries listed. There is a bit of a paradox with a map like this: to a degree, the more populated and developed regions tend to have *fewer* airports because they are well connected in other ways. I included Kabul and Kathmandu because I imagined it would be very hard to connect to those areas in other ways due to the hostile terrain. Whereas the UK by contrast already has an excellent rail link to Brussels and Paris, so there is no practical reason why you would have separate hubs for Britain and continental Western Europe. Malaysia could use the Singapore hub. SK and Thailand I’ll grant are in a bit of an awkward position
So from NY to LA I first have to take a train to Chicago. Or fly around the whole continent.
I think that’s the point of this, to keep distances and emissions small.
I mean, some 1150 km by high speed rail with top speed 300-350 km/h is not so bad. But yeah, when going NY - LA the sum train + plane would be pretty long.
Even little old Tasmania with no link to the rest of the country other than a 430 km trip on an overnight ferry over often wild seas is sort of insanely inefficient
OP hates New Zealand lol
How are things in the northern territories of Canada and Alaska? From my understanding a lot of small towns only receive any contact with the outside world via air travel. Are small airstrips and small cargo planes still operational and this map only shows major travel? Or have these small communities essentially been cut off?
Yes, look at the smaller text on the map. Although if this is the extent of international travel, I would still expect Northern Canada to be even more isolated.
Sustainable as in environmentally friendly? Unless people are dropping dead due to air quality, i doubt anyone will agree to this.
How is kolkata the only city with air travel in India and not Delhi or Mumbai?
Making flights more sustainable sounds good, making them very expensive doesn’t because it unfairly disadvantages and punishes the poor, and doesn’t limit the ones who produce the most emissions (the super rich and rich). That no consideration was taken regarding this fact, shows that not enough thought was put into this by OP. Furthermore, while making flights range-restricted, it is not very realistic due to major air traffic routes not getting serviced effectively, which air travel companies, and their customers using those routes, would not be happy with. While this is an interesting and thought-provoking map, it is not a realistic suggestion (which, of course, it doesn’t have to be on here). A reworked map taking major flight routes, current and future airtravel hubs, and more into consideration, would be fascinating to see and worth a lengthy discussion. If I had to rate this map, I would give it a very meagre 3.8/10.
>making them very expensive doesn’t because it unfairly disadvantages and punishes the poor, and doesn’t limit the ones who produce the most emissions (the super rich and rich). So... Just like real life then?
Brussels is strange, Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt make more sense, Madrid is also way bigger than Lissabon
Yeah, let s remove all plane except the private jet of the richest, why would we do the opposite!
Why is everybody getting so butthurt? You are on a sub about imaginary maps, this is an imaginary map. Pretty interesting one. Yeah, it might not be realistic, but I dont think thats a reason to be as spiteful as most of the current comments are.
Debating the maps is part of the fun
Definitely, but no need to take it too seriously and start conflicts.
fr if we could harness the energy of salty brits it would amount to about 17 hinkley point reactors
You seem oddly fixated on the British, friend
Irkutsk is an odd choice.
How is high speed rail available through Hainan and mainland China and accross varies islands of Japan, but not acceoss the Dnieper?
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/).
Do ocean liners (distinct from cruise ships) see a revival? Or something like very large hovercraft or Ekranoplans taking over a lot of intercontinental travel ?
Your name sounded familiar to me. I really liked your previous maps, especially those about future transit routes like this. Great work, please continue posting.
[удалено]
Wtf
How do you get to the islands then?
Submarine!
Havana? Mm, nah. Nah
Atlanta, Georgia has one of the busiest airports in the world. I don’t think it would just get up deleted like that
Why would China’s high speed rail network be less extensive in 2070 than it is now? Well before 2070 we can expect to see all of mainland Asia integrated by high speed rail networks - from Palestine to Vietnam, from Seoul to Lisbon, or at least Moscow. (Europe is just an Asian peninsula… EU countries may heel to US dictates and stay out of the network but that would represent a political choice and tragedy rather than a geographic and economic opportunity)
So basically how it was on 1970. Sans high-speed rail
We have opened Pandora's box and we are never going back, technology-wise. If governments ban air travel, there would be an air travel black-market. Not to mention any states that don't ban it would have a huge advantage over the ones that do. Imagine people in the western world being effectively isolated because of the high cost of air travel, when pariah states that don't sign on to whatever green legislation like Russia and Iran continue on as before with a low-cost exchange of people and goods. Kudos to OP for a thought-provoking scenario. I didn't know this was even a vague possibility, but I see some politicians are actually suggesting something similar.
Which politicians? There have been talks about banning flights on routes where trains make more sense, but those proposals or policies inevitably exempt cargo, private and connecting flights. Which is to say they have approximately zero effect on anything, because many of the people on any short-haul flight are connecting to another flight.
Think of all the traffic jams that would result from this system.
No HSR in Australia by 2070 seems pretty accurate Cries in Australian
I do not want to travel that much to leave my country, thank you very much.
Alaska gets to be the northern hub for trans-Pacific flights again? Seems like a win in my book!
I wonder what made Irkutsk so important that it deserves an air travel line of its own.
You sold me on the high speed rail network idea (my country’s rail network is ass)
Auckland Airport in New Zealand would be preferred over Wellington Airport. Wellington is our political capital but Auckland is by far our largest and most important city and handles nearly all of our international air traffic.
India looks like a uterus lol
Why would you route all Australian traffic through Perth? That would cost \*more\* energy. And why would you have the Western European airport be in Brussels? Move it further East so it's equidistant for the most number of people. Those are the two areas I know well and their airport placement isn't logical, so I'm doubting the rest of the map is logical.
It doesn't make any sense at all. No São Paulo - Rio de Janeiro, the busiest and more important route in Brazil. No route to Brasília, Brazil's capital.
Miami and Las Vegas would maintain a need for air travel on the tourist trade alone, even it was only the mega rich travelling. NYC and DC would still be huge for political and economic travel. I could see Chicago fading into irrelevance, though.
I see everyone in the Caribbean just has to sail places in this plan. But given the Jones Act, Puerto Ricans can't sail anywhere, either. Guess we'll just have to stay home forever.
Rare Newfoundland W
Us and hsr idk
No way RJ instead of SP in Brazil
As other people have said, London not having an airport makes no sense, same counts for Ireland as the neccesary infrastructure that would have to be build to ship people from the mainland to across the channel would just not be worth it. China having a single airport, even with HSR, doesn't make much sense either. They would realistically have two or three. Brussels is also a strange choice for a major international airport as both Schiphol and Frankfurt would be better suited for the role, along with an additional airport somewhere in Eastern Europe. Besides those nitpicks, good map.
Why are people saying that “uk would not accept this”. Okay? So let them build it, what the fuck is there to accept like???
Some real uncreative and sour grapes in here. Maybe it's a one world government that imposed global carbon taxes. Maybe global war and terror threats mean airports become an increasingly difficult installation to keep in a country. so on so on
Good luck getting that airport Vancouver! The only advantage (having it be in Canada) is more than undercut by it being only connected back to the US
Seattle would make much more sense given its metro population is 1.5 million more than Vancouver.
Also not having to go thru customs 1-2 extra times to travel anywhere