Hey America, Make With the !@~$ High-Speed Rail Already

You forget; outside of Chicago, New York and Washington DC, we Americans loathe public transportation.

there are some strange ideas and conclusions in the text: 500 miles or three hour flight. I assume that in a 3h flight you are approx 1500 miles down the road. Add the embarkment time and the time to reach the city center and the train will perhaps catch up.

But only when the train station to jump on the high speed train is close to the departure point and the drop off station is in the same city center as you destination.

Here the whole picture collapses: I sometimes take the high speed train (usually to Paris) and I have to count more time to reach the station in Brussels where I can jump on the Thalys than the time that I need to reach Paris from that point. Usually real business is not in the neighborhood of the train station, the administration is located there. So you need to jump on the local public transport system to reach the final destination again.

The idea that distances in Europe are smaller is only partly correct: OK within France you only travel as far as NY-Chicago. But Europe is more than that, business goes from Dublin to Athens or from Stockholm to Lisbon and the train only takes over the congested air zone between London-Paris-Brussels-Frankfurt, in the near future Shiphol will be in the high speed connection zone too. (Test runs are busy or practically finished) The investments to do this are huge (a tunnel below the channel is one example) and the region is so congested that the perfect route is not easy to follow. here the US has a nice benefit.