This. Never understood the term in the first place, is this something I’m not american enough to understand? Isn’t there a substantial difference between right-liberal and left-liberal?

fair point, though using high speed rail speeds as a comparison is kind of unfair as high speed rail still is pretty rare in europe (excluding france and spain I guess), in germany for example a train journey that only makes use of high speed tracks is basically non-existent and expanding high speed rail infrastructure takes a long time. It makes a lot more sense imo to use 160 km/h as a speed for comparison.

Your point probably still holds, as although it takes an insane amount of time to build hsr infrastructure it is happening and will continue to happen.

what about short-haul flights? Routes such as Berlin-Copenhagen seem to make sense, as in: Not as fast as a plane but faster than a train and possibly cheaper than both (using hydrogen airships). I don’t know much about airships but that is what came to my mind (besides obviously the freight side of things that is being researched).