Trump is a problem with that. Quick do we have a left wing pedophile?

The meme even shows their photos.

This is not a proper tram, but really a battery bus on tram tracks. So low capacity, charging problems combined with fixed routes.

Bus lanes are a thing and this is built into a road. So not really an advantage. You add rails and switches to the system. Those need to be maintained as well. The prefictability is really a flaw. Busses can go anywhere with a road. Much more flexible.

So basically it can reverse, which can help, but also requires either two drivers or the driver to walk through the train.

What exactly makes this better then a bus?

Carbrain: Need big car to win accident!

Train:

The direct route would be through NRW, but the one this train takes is going further south via Erfurt-Frankfurt-Strasbourg. Strasbourg has a proper hsr on the French site, which helps a lot. It technically would be faster to go via Cologne and Brussels, but that would cause a lot of problems.

For the current route the big missing section is between Mannheim-Frankfurt-Erfurt. There are plans for it, which are being pushed right now.

The regional service sucks to a large part due to a lack of capacity on German main lines. Regional trains and freight trains run at about the same speed, which is great for capacity. However high speed trains are faster and therefore need to overtake them. You need to plan for that, which require additional capacity. In other words, when you take ICE trains of the old main lines, you massivly improve regional rail as well.

There is also the Saarbrücken tram train, which goes to France.

For anybody wondering, why DB being able to meet minimum service is so incredible, it is rather simple. Both passenger and freight demand in Germany have grown over the last decades. However the government did rarely invest in new track or even repairs of old railway infrastructure. Basically Germany needs a high speed rail network parallel to the exisiting slower lines to meet demand, as well as some additional freight lines. Without that DB has no chance in hell to actually be a good rail provider.

So the fact that they can somewhat meet demand is an incredible achievement by DB.

Paris - Berlin is 1h50min by plane and the direct train takes 8h17min using the direct train. For security checks you can add about 3h to the flight and a bit more as the train stations are probably close to the destination.

The main problem is a lack of hsr track in Germany. If that would be fixed, then trains would be faster then planes in practical terms. Paris - Marseille happens to be only a bit shorter and it is much faster in a train.