Actually, it is the other way around. Despite subsidies, trains cannot compete with aircraft in most cases. Indeed, fuel for international air traffic is exempt from taxation, but the train too does not pay taxes on fossil fuel used to generate electricity either. In addition, the infrastructure for the train is heavily subsidized. Within the Netherlands for instance the train passenger pays about 45% of the costs. For HSR the subsidy is probably higher. See “Aviation – Solutions versus Framing”. The airline passenger pays all costs. Aviation is cheap because flying in itself is a very efficient mode of transport. Furthermore virtually no physical infrastructure is required and aircraft can be deployed very flexibly, making an average load factor of around 85% possible. Relatively few aircraft are therefore needed, which also lowers the cost. Fewer than 30,000 aircraft provide all of the air traffic of the whole world. As a result, the total energy used per person per kilometer is also rather low. All in all, from an economic point of view as well as from a climate point of view, HSR is only competitive starting at nine million passengers per year and over distances of less than 500 km.