>>1582952>Europe and Japan are flatThat's a joke, right?
There are plenty of mountains in the alps, yet Switzerland has quite a decent rail network, and so do Austria and the southern parts of Germany.
And like most of Japan is full of mountains.
>>1582950Most of the US is relatively flat, only near the west coast you have to deal with significant mountains.
But they can be dealt with by means of planning the route properly, drilling tunnels and building viaducts.
Also:
Multiple unit type trains can climb steeper.
>>1583180Not sure if you knew, but highspeed trains in europe usualy don't end at a border.
Many lines cross borders and you can for example see an ICE in France or a TGV in germany on a regular basis.
Also China isn't exactly small either and has a better HSR infrastructure than the US.
>>1583622At that point you have more than 10x the road surface than actualy usefull surface and would probably take forever to get somewhere as everything so ridiculously spread out.
