I can hop in a train at Zürich main station in Switzerland and be in Paris in 4 hours or I can get in another one and be in Milan in 3 and half hours. On my trip I can use the internet, go to the restaurant or relax in the quiet carriage. No turbolance, no weather delays and the ride is very quiet.

How much work can you really get done going via airplane? How much time do you waste going through security and how well can you work crammed into a tiny seat?

Sometimes taking it a bit slower is also good for your health.

Zurich to Paris (489km) is shorter than San Francisco to Los Angeles (559km).

Europeans think that 100km is a long way while Americans think that 100 years is a long time.

Yup. Door to door from south east England to the French Alps is nigh on identical if you take a plane and all then ceremony around that, or just jump on the Eurostar and travel mostly at 140mph or so.

It _really_ depends on the distances and sizes of the cities you're going to. Paris-London train is about 3 hours, which is likely less than you'll spend on getting to+from an airport. Paris-Berlin on the other hand is miserable, unless you love trains.

Or unless you take a night train. Get in in the evening, sleep most of the way and wake up at your destination. That can actually save you time compared to a flight, or be a lot more comfortable than, e.g., getting up at 4 AM to take a flight to a meeting in the morning somewhere.

When I looked at what map finds, there were only connections with two or three transfers. That doesn't sound like a comfortable night.

I was speaking more generally, sorry; there is currently no daily Paris-Berlin night train (and I guess the weekly Russian train is suspended). The most reasonable connection seems to be: Paris 19.04 (ICE 9557) 22.17 Mannheim 23.47 (Nightjet 470) 07.38 Berlin, with some time to drink a nightcap in Mannheim, but I can see how that won't work for everyone. You can also leave Paris at 17.55 and change more comfortably in Karlsruhe with maybe a late dinner. In the reverse direction you'll have an unpleasant change in the early morning though.

In daytime, there are a few options with only one change, but you'll sit in a train for 8 hours or so, which may not be your thing.

In general, https://seat61.com/ has good tips.

This is exactly my point, trains can't compete with point-to-point travel at 500mph. So injecting a bunch of padding on either side of flights is the best way of making train travel more appealing.

Those points are usually fairly far outside of their respective cities though, to be fair. Planes are always going to be preferable for long journeys, London-Istanbul is a trip only big train fans would plan to take by rail. But I can take some really nice direct train journeys where I am - Budapest, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Belgrade and more. And since I end up in the city centre it's usually a quick tram or subway to where I'm staying, or hopping another train onwards to a smaller town. And travelling on the train with friends and a beer is really pleasant :-)

2hrs 16 min is the usual time for London to Paris. So much quicker and nicer than flying all round really.

Taking a train from Hamburg to, say, Malaga, would be pretty uncomfortable. The distance is too big and you would have to switch trains several times, with a risk of one train running late and missing the next connection.

But for distances up to 4-5 hours by train, especially if the connection is direct, it is better to take the train. While the flight time may be much shorter, the need to get to/from the airport (which tend to be far away from the city itself, if only because of noise issues) and to be at the airport 2 hours before departure will consume a lot of time.

Train stations, OTOH, are usually located fairly close to the city center, if not squarely in it, for historical reasons (most important railway links were built prior to 1870, when the cities were much smaller than today).

Trains could easily beat air travel if they could skip the ridiculous security theater. Having to get to the airport 2 hours early is a whole lot of slack to let trains catch up.

I view any mass transport as a security risk for me so I welcome airport "security theater". there is downside, but imo airports screen better than trains for bad actors

This is why I prefer riding high speed rail over the half as expensive domestic flights. If they take that away, I want to buy a horse.

I don't think anyone is expecting people to start taking a train from London to Istanbul, unless they are doing it for the trip in itself. The sweet spot for trains is travel > 100 miles and < 500 miles, so say Paris-Nice like is highlighted in the article.

In around the 150-800 km span, high speed rail reigns supreme over all other modes of transport. Above that, airplanes start making more sense, but for any trips in that span HSR should really be the default.

high speed night trains can compete at longer distances but capital costs become problematic. they would be more cost competitive if rail received the same amount of subsidy that air does