With the train you potentially lose a lot less productive time. Air travel can't be made much nicer since there are too many hard limits. The train however suffers from a lack of investment in fundamentals. A lot of people live in the suburbs today, where the train doesn't stop. Stockholm central station is despite the many renovations not very nice. The trains themselves are getting old. The infrastructure and service isn't what it could be either. And maybe most of all everything is just expensive in Sweden, and the Nordics, these days.
If you could have a slightly faster train with first class airline interior and a matching, not too expensive, hotel on top of the train station it would be a competitive proposal. But while I can appreciate that people like to talk about trains on hacker news the story really is that the future isn't happening in Sweden. Rather we seem to be on a seemingly predictable path following countries like the US and the UK were we are incapable of making long term investments and everything of value is getting expensive.
If you could have a slightly faster train with first class airline interior and a matching, not too expensive, hotel on top of the train station it would be a competitive proposal. But while I can appreciate that people like to talk about trains on hacker news the story really is that the future isn't happening in Sweden. Rather we seem to be on a seemingly predictable path following countries like the US and the UK were we are incapable of making long term investments and everything of value is getting expensive.