This was a reasonable reading of the sentence, let me indulge into a digression about German grammar. > A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, a

This was a reasonable reading of the sentence, let me indulge into a digression about German grammar. > A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, as high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross for political reasons English is more topic-loaded: We might say "for political reasons, every high speed train in Germany..." and so on. In fact if it made any sense for the reason trains cross states to be a political one, the "for political reasons" clause would attach to "cross", not "have", where I believe this is unambiguous in German. "for political reasons" could have been regulation, also. It happens that it isn't. For that matter "need to" carries more of a sense of obligation than I feel is truly warranted. That all said, it's valid English and I read it to mean as the author intended.