SOME INTERESTING PROJECTIONS ABOUT THE FAST TRAINS OF EUROPE.

The business consulting firm UBS Research is already thinking about After.

[A]nalysts found that governments would ‘pursue the expansion of high speed rail’, with more than €100bn being invested in the European Union and more than 800bn yuan spent in China, generating ‘incremental demand for new equipment to boost speeds and density’. They estimated that there would be ‘revenue opportunities’ worth €40bn to €60bn in Spain, France, Germany and Italy over the next 10 years. This could slow global air traffic growth to 4∙6% a year over the 2018-28 period, they believed, although ‘every player is exposed in the air travel, rail and auto sectors’.

To some extent that's being driven by flight-shaming. The article doesn't reveal whether the report anticipates airlines continuing to shoehorn more people into the same hull, and the partial effects of all those extra travellers breathing into the same recirculated, positive-pressure air.  The closing line is instructive.  "Service and frequency are key drivers of demand for longer train journeys, and ‘both can be improved when competition among operators is introduced’."  You mean, for instance, a reprise of the Race to the North, or perhaps, in North America, the reintroduction of the Royal Blue Line to keep The Pennsylvania Railroad, er, Amtrak Northeast, on its toes?