The Worldwatch Institute recently released a study into the impacts and coverage of High Speed Rail across the world.  A summary press release has proved to be a really interesting overview of their findings and has provided some really interesting stats on high-speed rail.  Some of those include:

•  In 2005, the Spanish government announced an ambitious plan for some 10,000 kilometers of high-speed track by 2020, which would allow 90 percent of Spaniards to live within 50 kilometers of an HSR station
• Intercity rail in Japan accounts for 18 percent of total domestic passenger-kilometers by all travel modes----compared with just 5 to 8 percent in major European countries and less than 1 percent in the United States
• In France, rail's market share of the Paris-Marseille route rose from 22 percent in 2001 (before the introduction of high-speed service) to 69 percent in 2006. In Spain, the Madrid-Seville rail route's share rose from 33 to 84 percent

That last one in particular is further proof of the line we've continued to plug on how the length of the journey has an enormous impact on the share on any particular route.  Nice to see further confirmation of the trends we see elsewhere.