I used to do Cologne-Munich _all_the_effing_time (~600km, door-to-door 6-7h, depending on connection). You can save about 1h by taking a flight, but then you'll never have a solid chunk of at least one 1h to do anything within.
And that's given the current shitty track system. The only bit of genuine high-sped rail on that connection is Frankfurt-Cologne, maybe a quarter of the trip. Top speed is around 300 km/h on that bit; otherwise around 200, sometimes less. One point of comparison: The fully modernized Berlin-Munich track is about the same length; some trains take less than 4 h and that's with stops along the way.
This is a trip that I'm very familiar with, but it's very typical [0]. Note that some countries have chosen different tradeoffs - e.g., France and Spain with their ultra-fast point-to-point connections, eschewing a more dense high-speed net.
The point of all this being: Trains already work great, and can still get quite a bit better with investment - certainly quite some ways above 600 km trips.
I wouldn't look at trip time alone, but uninterrupted time during which you can do work. On most brief flights there barely is any. By contrast, for a business traveler, a long high-speed rail trip can simply be the first part of the day.
And that's given the current shitty track system. The only bit of genuine high-sped rail on that connection is Frankfurt-Cologne, maybe a quarter of the trip. Top speed is around 300 km/h on that bit; otherwise around 200, sometimes less. One point of comparison: The fully modernized Berlin-Munich track is about the same length; some trains take less than 4 h and that's with stops along the way.
This is a trip that I'm very familiar with, but it's very typical [0]. Note that some countries have chosen different tradeoffs - e.g., France and Spain with their ultra-fast point-to-point connections, eschewing a more dense high-speed net.
The point of all this being: Trains already work great, and can still get quite a bit better with investment - certainly quite some ways above 600 km trips.
I wouldn't look at trip time alone, but uninterrupted time during which you can do work. On most brief flights there barely is any. By contrast, for a business traveler, a long high-speed rail trip can simply be the first part of the day.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...