Welcome to West and Central Asia, a land defined, in large part, by conflict and theocratic nonsense.
The majority of this map has risks associated with it. With this particular map, it’s very important to remind ourselves what sources of risk are. Fundamentally, there are three different sources of risk: general safety of travel, a general lack of development (which can cause more desperate people to try to steal from/screw with the lines), and authoritarianism (which is more susceptible to governments causing problems for trains).
Authoritarian regimes in this part of the world actually tend to do well on general traveler safety because their economies more or less depend on it. But, some countries simply come off as not credible despite that, and the risk zones reflect these issues. Syria, Iraq, and Iran are too large and geographically vital to avoid, so we just run through-lines anyway.
Ultimately, the sheer quantity of minor lines is, as much as anything else, attempting to minimize risk and keep trains moving in an efficient manner through this very difficult region. There’s a lot of explaining to do about station choices, so let’s get to it.
The triple east lines out of Riyadh may look unnecessary at first glance on the map here, but if you check out where these cities are actually located, it’s evident that the W3 line is actually a bit more annoying to ride along than it looks, and people in Riyadh may not want to go on either end to end up in Doha.
Still discussing Saudi Arabia, I’m going to just very quickly comment that I’m denying Mecca a station1, despite it theoretically qualifying. Take Saudi transit from Jeddah. For similar reasons, I didn’t allow an east line out of Jeddah at all2.
Despite the Caucasus own internal conflicts, they’re not particularly risky to run lines. But they’d rather not run lines into Russia, so we consider them part of this network, allowing them to go to Turkey and also southward. I did the only feasible option for Yerevan, since I’m smart enough not to correct it direct into either Azerbaijan or Turkey.
Palestine officially is considered a moderate risk by my formulas. The reason I don’t run to the West Bank is simply that it actually lacks any qualifying cities3. Gaza is ‘riskier’ than the West Bank, but there’s not that much differential info, so they actually end up in the same zone.
Israel actually is considered democratic by the Democracy Project and thus got exempted from my ratings. But the recent conflicts and attitudes of the regime make this an extremely questionable call from my end, and a lot of hate is getting generated all around here. I thus have to call it a moderate risk as well despite what my formulas say.
But the source of risk is fundamentally conflict. So how do I avoid or at least minimize conflict? First, it actually does help to make sure Gaza City gets a station: give Gaza an investment into not pulling any funny business on the network. But I did not want it running direct to Tel Aviv4, and I want the world line to avoid both, as these are flashpoint cities. My solution was to put a helper station in the smaller Israeli city of Be’er Sheva. It’s not particularly near much, so it’s not a target for attacks in the same way that Tel Aviv and Gaza themselves are. It’s on a more direct through-line between Cairo and Amman. And it *does* allow for a reasonable line to connect Gaza with Israel.
Okay, time to talk about the lines themselves… Since I’ve discussed a lot of my station decisions above, there won’t be nearly as much to say about the lines. It turns out that there’s really not any lines that should be doing anything other than running at 60 minute frequency, so we won’t even have that to mention.
W1 Line:
This is our world line.
W2 Line:
The W2 line is one of just two lines that is not the world line that is also inter-network, as it heads over to China after going through Kazakhstan.
W3 Line:
The W3 is the longest of our lines within West and Central Asia in terms of number of stations5.
W4 Line:
Yemen is a particularly problematic place to run a line to at the moment, and since it’s at the end, it’s possible that we’d want to simply halt the line in Jeddah until things get better. But it’s not like we don’t have issues in many places throughout the region, so it’s not necessarily fair to single Yemen out here.
West and Central Asia’s Minor Lines:
The network has a lot of minor lines to facilitate efficiency. There’s really nothing more to say here as I did most of my talking in the intro.
We’re next headed to South Asia! Just two networks left!
Jerusalem didn’t qualify anyway, but it would also have been denied for essentially similar ideas, though technically different problems.
If you’re wondering why there’s no direct from Riyadh to Jeddah, despite there being one from Riyadh to every other Saudi station, the reason is indeed that the route would basically pass by Mecca.
Running a supplemental helper line from Ramallah or Hebron to Be’er Sheva isn’t a terrible idea either, but since it wouldn’t actually connect any qualifying cities, felt outside the scope of this project.
At least, not without a stop elsewhere. I want this line to largely run away from the coastal corridor.
the W2 is longer by time