[dottedmag]

A direct train from Zürich to Milan takes 3.5 hours, departs every hour from the the center of Zürich, arrives to the center of Milan and costs €30.

A direct flight from Zürich to Milan takes 1 hour, plus hours of nonsense before and after, departs 3 times a day from the airport, arrives to the Milan airport, and costs €550.

So passenger trains sound pretty competitive to me, at least short-distance ones.

[carapace]

The answer to this is the same as the answer to gaadd33's comment: Distance and density. Europe and the East Coast are densely populated and the distances between the population centers are relatively short. The reasons are even the same: both were laid out largely before the advent of motorized transportation.

So you're right, in places where the density is high and the distances are not too great passenger trains can be competitive. (Especially if the tracks were laid a century ago, or more, eh?)

In the US we have "the largest highway system in the world." (For better or worse.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Highway_System_(Unite...