alt Hacker NewsGeography like that does help a lot, it’s part of the reason it’s so easy to do really good high-speed rail in Italy over somewhere like Germany that is way more spread out. But it’s only half the picture, you also need the political will to get it built!
The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy.
But because cars are major German export driver and car manufacuring is major employment in Germany, anything competing with cars has not much political support.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-merz-pledges-to-resist-2035-eu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandticket