But really, technology is only going to advance and travel is going to become a lot easier. I like it though. Horray for the world.

As for the Qinzang railway, looks like it was pretty much impossible until relatively recently. People have been living there nearly forever (and wanting a railway since 1912, apparently) but the terrain presented too much of a technological challenge until the late 20th Century. (They’re pumping in oxygen because of the altitude! That is trick!) And it cost (and is costing; it’s not complete) billions.

Besides, we also have floods in winter and spring. Mediterranean climate rocks -_-;

The other issue are dams. Pretty much every river here is dammed throughout its course to curb on the floods and manage the water for agriculture, and it tends to impair its navigability… you can see a list of the dams of the Ebro basin here. So Yeah. That graphic is way bluer than it should be in my country.

These regions can’t sustain a dense communications network (like the ones found in Central Europe) because there isn’t a lot of people to connect, but it doesn’t mean that connections can’t be made because of technological or geographic reasons.

This is a great post, keep it up.

And in DIMA’s defense, the terminology isn’t exactly intuitive! We’re talking about the western part of the middle of the country but, for reasons more related to history than geography,* that’s not the Midwest. Nope, the Midwest is the middle-eastern part of the country. (Oh well. At least The South is actually in the south!)

Unlike roads, which can be built on top of all kinds of surfaces and from whatever materials are available, railroads have pretty rigid requirements. Off the top of my head: deserts don’t have enough trees appropriate for building railroads, jungle has too many trees (making tracks hard to build and maintain), and mountains are just too difficult/dangerous to get over/through. I suspect that those would be major problems if we were building the world’s rail system today; they were insurmountable 150+ years ago.

Reality is a strange place.

@Elena: the navigability of a river seems just as frequently to be determined by local statute as it is by whether or not you can actually get a boat up it enough to support any sort of river traffic. At least that’s the way it is here in Oregon, where property values and local governmental control (and attendant environmental enforcement laws) tend to obtain differently depending on whether or not that stream abutting your property is defined as “navigable”.

Looks like everybody with a condescending answer to Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist could use a geography lesson.

The Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin

On the other hand, canal networks built for transporting goods (such as the ones in the UK or the south of France) aren’t usually considered rivers.

As for railroads, you have to love Die Bahn. Best trains in the world <3
It would be interesting to see a map of high-speed railroads (like the shinkansen in Japan or the TGV in France), too.