Item — HN Reader

The US is too big to make crossing it by train (even high speed) plausible when airplanes are a thing. High speed trains proved successful in medium distances. It sounds reasonable for California (LA-SF) and for east coast cities (New York-Washington), but covering the entire US is really not very useful.

However, I'm pretty sure that a large part of the costs of the California rail are related to private land, which probably isn't an issue through the majority of the route.

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It took me a while to realize it, but one thing I like about Europe is that the financial centers and economically relevant places are centrally located

Compared to US where you have commute across the entire continent to leverage the largest pools and networks

This would be similar to commuting from Portugal to Estonia and thats not a thing.

And China is even bigger, yet they never tried any sort of excuses.

When you factor in check in, security, getting to and from the airport which often isn’t near the city, etc, high speed rail is way better. Drop in 10 minutes before you need to leave and the stations are right in the middle of town. For distances under a thousand miles, rail can easily be faster.

That is, until more Americans start riding rail and TSA gets involved and now it's exactly like an airport...