Same in the US, and they're slow. Going halfway across the country (i.e. anywhere interesting) takes ~24 hours, and the cheapest seats (not a room) cost about the same as a regular flight, more if you consider budget airlines. And that's if there's a train going where you want to go without ridiculous transfers.

try travelling between countries. eurorail is generally 2-3x times more expensive than cheapest airline. Trains have so much capacity and yet even within countries ticket prices are around £20-30 per two hours of travel. Should be much cheaper, governments should give train lines more incentives than airlines but I feel like that is probably the opposite.

Ameribro here, I can almost guarantee that your airlines are running at a loss as part of a long term EEE strategy to monopolize long distance travel. Once they've got the market cornered, your tickets are going to get A LOT more expensive like ours are. Oh, and they'll start demanding subsidies from your governments to keep from going tits up because they accidentally the whole thing to their shareholders. Don't fucking fall for it.

Traveling by ICE in Europe was fucking awesome. 300kph and like $10 euro to go basically anywhere...well 15 years ago it was that cheap. Dunno about now. And I say this as a gear head.

Such infrastructure should be completely & unlimitedly free for private use.

When Germany did (twice? Forgot the details :/) the experiment with the unlimited EU monthly tickets for 7€ or whatever people were really glad, everyone could travel & see more. And they still talk about that.