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Comment by ant6n | Hacker News Reader

Im French rail planning, rail is considered competitive with air travel up to 3h. In German planning, up to 4h. With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km.

Plus, one could try to revive night trains. Arriving at 9am in the morning in some far away city, we’ll rested, would be useful both for vacations and business trips. And could easily allow distances of 1500km even without having high speed rail lines everywhere, or somewhat longer distances with.

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Taking the night train is a common way to travel within Finland. By train, it takes around 10 hours and 1000-1100km north to Lapland (taking Helsinki-Levi as example). It's possible to take a local flight at vastly higher prices and no room for the equipment people tend to take along for such trips, such as skis and hiking gear.

In central Europe, commuting by train is also pretty common. You might get packed pretty tightly at the most busy commuting times, but you avoid the huge traffic jams in and out of major cities which can waste hours of your day.

> Plus, one could try to revive night trains.

The linked article talks about this:

>New sleeper train connections are cropping up across Europe. The Austrian operator ÖBB Nightjet has overnight services to cities like Rome, Milan, Brussels and Amsterdam, and recently initiated a Vienna-Paris overnight link.

> With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km.

Sadly going through the alps at that speed is not that simple. But I'd love to have interconnected cities.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000124

There are several connections through the alps being built right now. Gotthard base tunnel through Switzerland, Brenner Base Tunnel through Austria/Italy, and a connection Italy/France. Not all connections through Europe go through the Alps, and u can get a decent average speed even if occasionally dropping below the maximum speed for some rough areas.

I am from the alps, so I am quite aware of this. Still, I can go from Berlin to Munich in the same time it takes me to get through half of Austria as of now. The Brenne Base Tunnel is a needed thing (my grandparents live in the area where traffic is currently going through) but by my judgment it will be too little, too late.

I'm up for investing in faster trains, like Magrevs or even faster japanese who can reach +600km/h, that would be a game changer, you can transport four times more efficiently.

German trains rarely go 250kmph, let alone averaging that. Between Cologne and Frankfurt, sure. But most of the country, no.

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