Six Meridian Accord governments signed the Arden Pact on Wednesday, committing to a decade-long programme of high-speed rail construction that would link five capitals at 320 km/h and unify ticketing across the bloc by 2036.
The pact, negotiated over eighteen months and signed at a ceremony in the Arden border station that gives it its name, pools $28bn of national commitments with matching finance from the Accord’s joint infrastructure bank.
“March gave the Accord open borders. Today we give it fast ones,” said transport commissioner Ines Valco, crediting the spring’s visa-free corridor — and the tourism surge it unleashed — with converting three previously hesitant governments.
For Coravia, the programme funds the electrified upgrade of the Meridale–Ostrele spine and a new cross-border section toward the Veskan capital, cutting the fastest journey from six hours to under three. Construction on the Coravian sections begins in 2028, sequenced — officials concede — around the same contractor pool building Coastal Shield.
The common ticketing system arrives sooner: a single Accord-wide fare platform is promised for 2031, with airlines conspicuously absent from the launch communiqué. Skylark Air, which announced four new regional routes only a day earlier, offered a dry response: “We compete with timetables, not treaties.”
Ratification votes are expected in all six parliaments by spring. The pact’s first physical work — twin viaducts on the Arden approach — is contracted to begin within eighteen months.
