Which country are you in? Because the answer for "we" greatly depends on local environments and politics.
For Austria the answer for instance is "the alps" and urban sprawl. Trains stop everywhere and people want to keep this, there is just not enough distance to have high speed rails be effective and there is not enough space for dedicated lines. The answer is a very different one than for instance why Germany has so little.
The problem is that Denmark is shaped like a big L and there's no way to connect the ends without building an insanely long bridge.
There are no Alps between Vienna and Graz, the second largest city yet it takes 2.5 hours to get to Vienna from Graz, while the same ~200km journey is faster by car on the highway and that's accounting for traffic and you sticking to the 100-130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey. My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime.
When you monitor the trains' speed on the internal screens, you can see the average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph, slower than cars on the adjacent highway.
What's the excuse there for such slow ass trains? And Austrian train tickets aren't cheap either.
The Semmering base tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel which will shorten travel between Vienna and Graz, and the Koralmbahn tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
Also, no Alps between Vienna and Graz? Have you looked out of the window? If you haven't, here is the map. The heights of the peaks are in meters, so 3x for feet:
That is a bona fide mountainous terrain.
It's a train, so:
- Accelerating takes a lot of time and space
- Braking takes a lot of time and space
- Allowing overtaking takes a lot of infrastructure and good timetabling.
You what? Please don't take this the wrong way, but the things I read about European countries on HN sometimes are asinine and part of why, despite desperately wanting to sometimes, I'll do my best to never comment on US centric topics where I have little to know personal knowledge or experience.
Not only is the Südbahn between Vienna and Graz going through the Alps[0], it is the railways that goes through the alps. It is world famous for that fact. It was the first regular mountain railway in the world and is a UNESCO heritage because of it.
> [...] 130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey.
I'm certain the Railjet could also gain a few minutes (at most considering the Autobahn between Vienna and Graz) if their drivers ignored both laws and safety.
> My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime.
And people wonder why the government saw the need to introduce the ability to confiscate the vehicles [1] of such responsible individuals. As a motorcycle rider, the wanna be speed demons who have such important reasons for speeding are amongst the most dangerous, next to people unwilling to put their phone away. Also, a great statement on equality in our society. For some, a speeding fine can be devastating, for others, it's something their secretary handles.
Maybe your ex-CEO should spend a bit of their precious time to calculate how much they are really saving by speeding on that particular stretch of the Autobahn compared to sticking to the 100-130km/h speed limits.
> [...] average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph [...]
On the straights, which on this route are limited to the area between Gloggnitz and Vienna Meidling, the Railjet averages roughly 150km/h. I got off one, only a few hours ago, so can attest to that.
Look, the fact that the Semmering base tunnel hasn't already been built is a failure of local government, not least because the Westbahn (between Salzburg and Vienna) is already far faster than the car [2] and we could have had the same. Interested whether your ex-CEO at least uses the train between Vienna and Salzburg, considering it's only about the speed for them?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Pass
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/austria-a...
[2] 2h 18m vs 3h 15m
Chances are, robust process-structures and engineering capabilities didn't rank that high as decision-factors for supplier and operations companies...
You would board the train and get on the car that detaches at your intended destination. In the case that they want to run fewer cars than there are stops, either they could alternate which car detaches so that a core car makes it from start to end, or people wanting to make the whole trip would have to change cars sometimes.
Is this impossible? Would it be implausibly expensive? Is it "just an engineering challenge" like hydrogen fuel-cell cars (I.E. we'll figure it out just as soon as we have a better alternative)? I have no idea, but it sure sounds cool to me, and it doesn't feel like it's in the realm of fantasy.
1) The number of trains on the track would increase significantly making section control even harder. (In Germany this is one of the limiting factors for the overall capacity)
2) In order to attach/detach the front and back of the trains would have to be straight and vertical. At higher speeds this would lead to aerodynamic problems. You can see this issue when comparing local commuter trains which are vertical and often can be linked this way and high-speed trains which tend to have special aerodynamically shaped noses. The higher the speed the more elongated the nose.
Has been done historically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach
Rail is undoubtedly vital for the future and we should always be pushing for more, but I think it's ok to step back and appreciate that high-speed rail (and rail in general) in the EU is so much further ahead than the USA, even if it does still lag behind Japan and China.
Taking a plane was cheaper and took three hours and given that airport security, at least in one direction is basically non-existing you just show up 20 minutes before your plane leaves.
And boy, don't get me started on the Eurostar. It's expensive sure, but 2 hours-ish to go from London to Paris is ludicrous.
These would be
* many hours by car * <3 hours by fast train * <1 hour in flight by plane
The flight time is offset by security controls and getting to/from the airport, so a fast train is a good alternative (not perfect, just good).
I haven't found this to be true for London to Brussels. Eurostar terminals seem to operate like airports and require check-in two hours in advance, with airport style security. So I don't save time, and for me, my regional airport is much easier to reach than the Eurostar terminal.
I can believe it works better for "normal" train travel within the Schengen area, but I wonder: what are the security requirements then, if any?
High speed rail >240km/h is still very uncommon[0], especially cross border (tho notable exceptions exist, e.g. Paris-Milan with both TGV and Frecciarossa just reopened).
There are EU plans for a wider network but it's progressing very slowly.
The presence of fast trains between two cities, on the scale of <600km, is transformative, as it becomes more convenient to take a train than to fly, while also having less negative externalities.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe