&gt; The trains almost never go that fast<p>Sure they do. Worldwide, Acela is a peculiar exception, not a rule (and no if you&#x27;re going to put your train on old low-speed rails and give priority to freight you definitely don&#x27;t need high-speed trainsets, I&#x27;m not going to disagree with that one, turns out only in the US do people do that, go figure)<p>&gt; Average speed is the key thing.<p>And the average speed is higher if the train can reach a higher top speed. All of the top average <i>service</i> speeds are high-speed trains: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles#World_fastest_point-to-point_average_speeds_in_commercial_operations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Land_speed_record_for_rail_veh...</a><p>&gt; Why are we only impressed by megafast trains?<p>Because megaslow trains are pointless for long distances?<p>&gt; They aren&#x27;t really cost efficient and probably won&#x27;t be built at all.<p>Considering the US&#x27;s love for trains, I just assume you guys won&#x27;t build any either way, that&#x27;s usually a pretty safe bet.<p>&gt; Even 150km&#x2F;h means you could go Chicago to Cincinatti in 3 hours (vs 4.5 by car) or San Francisco to LA in under 5 hours (vs 6 hours by car). At 5 hours, that beats the hassle of an airplane, IMO.<p>When the flight is 1h15~1h30, you&#x27;ll be a very small minority, the general annoyance of transport and loss of the whole day means flight pretty much always win. Lower that to ~2h30 city center to city center, however, and train might become competitive, especially without security check and with better cabin comfort.