I moved from western Europe to eastern Europe and public transport by train is absolutely horrible. I still hope that one day I can catch a train that arrives on schedule. We're not talking a couple of minutes delay, we're talking multiple hours. Even when the train finally departs, it'll pick up delay along the way due to poorly maintained tracks and bad scheduling. All of this turns 6 hour trips into 10 hour trips.

I am well aware that this is anecdotal. But from my point of view, not all rails are fast and well-maintained in Europe. Based on my personal experience, that statement applies to western Europe.

>> Based on my personal experience, that statement applies to western Europe.

"Western Europe" is almost always what Americans are referring to when they say "Europe," for various biased reasons.

not build for high speed operation != low quality.

High Speed Rail is just a different style of construction, etc - but quality is subjective.

American rails are decidedly low quality. [The accident record is much worse](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/europe/railroads-ar...), and the freight networks spent many years dismantling tracks and electrification to improve the bottom line.

HSR really depends on straight and level right of ways, along with some better signaling equipment and more (complete?) separation with road traffic. China builds a lot of its HSR tracks elevated with lots of tunnels to blast through hills and mountains. Standard track can stand to meander more for less construction costs.

Why is slow and low quality rail great for freight?

Low maintenance costs mean cheap transport. Coal doesn't care if the trip takes an extra day.