If you're interested in the history of why Europe has such a dense train network, and the United States doesn't, it's partially about war.

There was a multi-part show I saw on BBC Four about a year ago that explained that Europe's train network isn't the result of some kind of visionary urban planning or anything altruistic. It's because European nations have such a long history of fighting one another. And in the early part of the last century, the continent went on a rail-building frenzy because of WWI.

The United States have only gone to beating each other up once, and that was before trains were viable as large-scale tools of war. Perhaps if the Civil War was delayed by a couple of decades, things might be different.

Of course, there are many other factors, but this is one that I find interesting and almost never explored.

Rail was a hugely impactful tool during the US Civil War.

I would guess that geography and the demographics of the American west are as much to blame as the relative lack of continental conflict in the rail era.

Rail was in fact critical for supply during the US Civil War. The Siege of Petersburg, whose eventual loss doomed the Confederacy, hinged on the important rail junction in the town. That's just one of many examples.

Use of rail in the America conflict prefigured its application the war of 1870 and of course WWI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_railroads_in_the_A...

In the Seattle area they keep tearing up the old train right-of-ways and then claiming they need incredible tens of billions of dollars and several decades to create new right-of-way.

The city also dug a new tunnel for cars. They decided the best use of the old tunnel was to fill it with rubble. Meanwhile, Seattle has some of the worst congestion in the country.

I have no idea what goes on in the planning meetings for this stuff.

All high speed rail lines are and have to be newly built lines though.

But you need local train service to allow for the long distances between stops you want on high-speed steel-wheel on steel rail systems. And, while there are alternatives with significantly higher acceleration/deceleration performance, they are not quite practical or use a lot more energy (Maglev could allow for frequent (100km @ 1000km/h top speed) stops, but it's extremely expensive to set up and there is basically no way to evade obstacles). These medium-speed tracks are old, but they allow up to 160km/h regularly if converted to ETCS (I think they need Level 2, due to the increased breaking distance), that is, with the normal regional trains introduced in the past few years.

The United States has a pretty dense rail network now, even after the cuts in the dark age of railroading - I'll point out that we have 6 major west-Midwest routes, 3 Midwest to east routes, plus an equal number of Midwest to south routings. We don't need more rail, we need subsidy to operate more passenger trains.

Even if the train ride were completely free I'd usually opt to drive. That's because most places in the US you need a car to get around. So I might as well just bring my own. Except for a hand full of major cities, the US just isn't dense enough for rail to work well.

How about ferry trains that also tack on cars for vehicles?

Europe's train network isn't quite as wonderful as many would have you believe. Connections in cities like Paris are terrible and slow (they sometimes require crossing the entire city, which can take a very long time, especially with luggage). Sleeper trains have been mostly retired, only to be replaced with very expensive "high speed" connections which aren't quite as fast or as convenient as closing your eyes and waking up at your destination. Not to mention they're nearly always more expensive than cheap flights.

There has been some talk of reviving some sleeper trains, but so far I haven't seen any new sleeper routes. Of course, Europe is a big place, but as far as I can tell, not much has improved over the last decade. If anything, cheap airfare has been on the rise and rail has been declining.

Don't get me wrong, I love trains, and I would like nothing more than a fast and cheap inter-European rail network worthy of the name.

The Austrian national rail company has bought up the sleeper trains from other companies and is trying to establish some international routes (under the Nightjet brand). They recently mentioned going to e.g. Copenhagen, but not without some subsidies from the government: the train set alone costs 15-25 million EUR and you can only use it once per day. Denmark doesn't want to run the night trains again, so it'd be interesting if someone else could establish the routes.

Vienna-Milano for 2 in a cabin with no one else is 190 EUR each way or 240 if you want an en-suite toilet/shower and takes 19 hours. Or you could fly (1 hour 20 minutes) for 50 EUR return per person.

So for the 380 EUR you save, you can go the evening before and spend an extra night in a 5-star hotel room in Milano, even accounting for transportation from the airport.

They are not as expensive or very similar in price if you price in emissions.

Indeed. But sadly that's not how plane tickets are currently priced.