That's not totally true, train can be cheaper depending on when you buy your tickets and compete with low cost airlines. If you also add the fact that you always arrive in the city whereas some airports requires a train or a taxis to get to it (which increase the overall price of your journey). At least that's the case in England and France where I often take the train.

Train stations aren’t always centrally located, especially in China where HSR stations can be as far away from city cores as airports. Japan also has some of that for smaller cities (eg Gifu vs Gifu-Hashima).

The French state railway company SNCF has a low-cost service high speed TGV service called Ouigo that also uses stations on the periphery of some cities (while regular TGV goes into central stations), just like low-cost airlines.

Sounds weird. The reason China and japan do is way is to keep the HSR track as straight and short as possible. Bringing a train into a city that isn’t an end point would probably slow it down a lot.

With Gifu-Hashima and other "rural" Shinkansen stations the reason is usually political. For example Gifu Prefecture would not allow the line to pass through the prefecture without a station being built. From Gifu city center it's actually faster to take a train to Nagoya and change to Shinkansen there, especially since every train stops at Nagoya and only a few at Gifu-Hashima.

In the case of Ouigo, I believe it’s in part because the station and track owner charges less to use peripheral stations than for central stations, and in part for price discrimination, so less price-sensitive business travelers and wealthier travelers aren’t tempted to go for the cheaper option.

> Keep in mind that European trains are typically more expensive than flights even on richly priced air routes

I have a lot of experience taking trains all over Europe. In almost no case was a train cheaper than flying once I included transportation to the airport. The few times a train costs more the difference is marginal and you'd end up flying Ryanair or Easyjet --- no thanks.

> And then the profitability of short distance routes is a direct product of the density of population.

Not a problem in the Northeast in the US. Only Amtrak can fail to offer a service that works everywhere else in the world.

I assume you meant to say train was usually cheaper. This will greatly depend on the country: for example in Germany trains are fairly expensive, a well-ahead booking (say, six months in advance) across the country usually ends up having the train option twice as expensive as a flight.

That said, I don't understand the hate for easyJet. It's one of my favourite airlines, being straightforward, well-informing, and no more crammed than your usual cattle class option in a traditional airline.

Agree. I flew both Ryanair and EasyJet on a recent European trip and they were fine. The base cost of the flight was ~$26. We had to check luggage so they ended up closer to $50.

In this case it wasn't that the trains were more or less expensive, but they were just slow from point A to B. I think Americans have a romantic notion that trains are great all over Europe, but it really does depend on the country. Western Europe, with Italy and Germany in particular seem to have a great high speed rail system. Eastern Europe has trains, but they are not nearly as efficient time wise.

The reason those airlines are so inexpensive is because they us Wray their employees, have to pay no tax on anything, and they get subsidies from politicians next to useless airports.

> a well-ahead booking (say, six months in advance)

You can only book train tickets three months in advance in Germany.

Last I was checking was for October tickets in May. Also, according to https://faq.trainline.eu/article/220-train-tickets-booking-h... it would be six months.

That said, currently they seem to reach only to mid-December so I don't really know.

I don't think that's fair to Amtrak. In Canada, Via Rail also fails to deliver the service that works everywhere else in the world.