That's the thing: This pod could potentially go 396 km/h given that they are able to lease, buy or expropriate land in a straight enough line allowing them to construct mostly straight tubes miles after miles and given that there are no natural barriers like hills, mountains, rivers etc. that prevent this either. But those same conditions are the main obstacles for traditional trains reaching high speed. It's really hard to find land for straight rails nowadays. Railroads tend to go from city to city, not from one point in an empty desert to the other. So they have to bend and twist and turn or go through tunnels. Most of the efforts on getting higher speed in Europe is about straightening out the rails and laying down modern rails.

Maybe the hyperloop can do sharper turns at high speed, and probably next generation of the pods or the loop allows for higher speed in general. But that the winner of the first attempts promises 396 km/h and not the +1,000 km/h we heard about before, does deflate the whole idea.