High-Speed Rail

of high-speed rail: Japan was one of the first believers in Shinkansen high-speed trains, and although it may have been surpassed by its French and other European competitors, it still has one of the most impressive (and expensive to travel on) high-speed railroad networks in the world.

That's incredible!
You forgot the pioneers of high speed rail: Japan!
Japan has a big HSR infrastructure that wasn't mentioned!
Would you correct this in the near future?

Although these illustrations are interesting and pretty they are not to scale. Europe is much smaller than the US, and over long distances air travel is perferable. Consider a 3.5 hour plane trip from Miami to New York City, or a 20 + hour train trip.
Adjacent cities with large joint commerce can benefit from these high speed train systems, because and hour plane flight with the time to get to and from the airport & check in is often roughly equal to a 4 hour train trip.

Unfortunately, due to poor politics I foresee the local government restricting or moving high speed lines into areas were they least accessible. Hence the old conundrum, give the money to government and they waste it, give to business and they spend it wisely.
Dr. Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management from Purdue University

is great idea.  But it is very expensive.
For long period in the US we have subsidized roads or we'd have evolved a vast efficient intercity rail network.  Currently only hauling freight, mostly, it still does a great job, at a fraction of the energy cost of semi-trailers.

However the real great application of rail would be IN the cities and to nearby residential areas.  Due to the huge volume of people commuting WITHIN a city vs between cities, this should be tackled first.

New York city is probably the best example of this in the US.  Not only does it have a very efficient subway (loses only $5 per rider, compared to SF Bart which loses $50/rider), but the trains extend out to nearby areas in addition to some intercity links (not high speed). 

My uncle was secty-treasurer for a large conglomerate with HQ in NY.  Ever concerned with money and convenience, even on a personal level, for years he took the train in from nearby town outside NY every day. 

I personally thought the idea of the Los Angeles light rail was abhorrent - you could buy fleets of new buses for the price. 

After riding the blue line from long beach to downtown and transferring to the gold line, I fell in love with them.  I've also ridden the green line to LAX area - El Segundo for tech conferences.  It turns out most riders prefer light trains much more than buses due to quickness, more frequent trains and safety (often on tracks separate from roads).  And one of the problems of bus fleets is labor costs are hugely more.

On the light rail you can get to vast areas of the city in clean fast comfort.  You can ride all day pass for $5. We'd park at the train station in LB instead of driving way up there.  You can stop and have an inexpensive lunch in Chinatown. 

Keep going and get off in Old Towne Pasadena with art galleries, museums and antique store, plus many more restaurants.  We found a new museum, the SW Museum because it has its own train stop.

We can now visit downtown without worrying about parking or driving on horribly crowded and sometimes one-way streets (one time trying to park in downtown at a restaurant for a biz meeting, we missed the parking lot.  Because of one-way streets, we had to drive all the way to MacArthur park to turn around!

Keep going on the Gold line train and you are just one mile north of the Huntington Gardens, the abode of Henry Huntington who created a vast network of light rail thru-out the LA area up to the early 1900's.  Huntington Beach named the city after him in hopes of encouraging him to build a rail extension to the city, which he did and which brought tons of beach goers.

Sadly, subsidies by local and federal govt to the road systems starting in the 20's, 30's and 40's wiped out any chance of profits in the light rail biz, and he shut down as cars became more widespread.

Just one more thing:  Nice map, and it highlights the high speed rail line gaps - shouldn't the EU connect france to spain and fill in the short gap between france and germany rail lines?  And send a line down into Italy tho alot of mountains to deal with.