Also to be fair Switzerland is a very compact country although quite mountainous. The length of the train rides, even with very fast trains would have an hard time competing against airplanes in the US.
In Switzerland a 3h hour direct, comfortable, Zurich-Geneva train ride isn't much worse than a Zurich-Geneva flight (30 min flight + security and transfer to the city is about 2 hours)
Fun fact: 8M Swiss do 1.8x the passenger kilometers of all of the US combined [1]. I'm pretty sure you have enough densely populated areas in the US that are larger than Switzerland, especially in the East coast.
There is a bit of mentality too - for Swiss, railroads are part of culture, train stations are always at the heart of a city, and even small places are connected. Train infrastructure is dense.
but it is bloody expensive, plain ticket for 20 km ride costs as much as 5 hour ride on fast train back home. everybody here buys early "ticket" that halves the prices of all tickets for 180 usd
