The Netherlands, while technically highly urbanized, has remained more like a bunch of small towns instead of a few highly populated cities like as is seen in the US, so it is much closer to the rural days of yore when the US was able to support a comprehensive, nation-wide passenger rail system.
Looking at population density if you draw a 50km radius in the Netherlands you get about 8m people. This covers lots of small cities etc. In the US you get maybe 5m in a contiguous city like Phoenix (which fills the circle) or the Bay Area. (LA is more dense and you might get 10m.)
Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. S the effective density experienced is much higher.
Much more the opposite. European settlements were largely established before the train existed, emerging from outward rural growth rather than seeing an active urbanization movement. Trains have been woven into that after the fact to best support the rural-esq population shape.
Whereas America was built by the train. Established originally to support the same rural-esq shape idea, but, with little in the way of existing settlements, the train ended up enabling the people to purposefully congregate rather than simply expand outward, which allowed those congregations to be designed such that transportation was unnecessary; being the whole appeal of leaving friends and family behind to move into those settlements. The passenger train eventually started dying out at the height of the urbanization movement because there was no longer a mass benefit from it like the was, and continues to be, in Europe and other places that grew up in those earlier times.
The vast majority of housing has been built since laying most railtrack and in many places around (new) train stations.
Also we should ignore the fact that the US already had a national rail network and STILL DOES for freight and had frequent regional rail service to even incredibly small podunk nowhere towns for decades. It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!
And nothing says the train must take 30 hours. 12H of highway driving is what, 600 miles? 1000? The slowest high speed rail lines in China have a design speed of 120mph. Some go 240mph. So that 600 mile trip could take 5 hours. The 1000 mile trip could take 8 and some change. Add in an hour or so to account for stops.
Like, I struggle to imagine how every goddamn conversation I have about rail in the US ends up like this, with someone mistaking my "heres what COULD be" with a comparison to "here's what IS". Do you not think that someone advocating for trains doesn't understand how crappy they are right now? That I'm advocating you take the train despite all of the reasons you mentioned its awful? Do you think the fact that tickets can command that price despite taking 30 hours indicates a latent demand?
The US already had the nation-wide passenger rail system. At one time it was the envy of the world. It'd still be here if the riders were. But they moved on to newer technologies better suited to the landscape.
Trouble is most people doing the NY->LA run are going to choose flight instead.
There are no trains in regular service that operate at anywhere close to those speeds. There are trains technically capable of doing it (and much more), sure, but the economics quickly stop making sense when you start pushing that much air. And flight still gets you there meaningfully faster, door-to-door, even if there were people theoretically willing to pay excessively to reach 250 mph, so there is still no reason for those who need to prioritize time to take the train.
> The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people.
Of course, most people have no reason to travel from NY->LA in the first place. Especially not on a regular basis. The primary users will be business customers and they tend to be quite time sensitive. Furthermore, even if there was that 250 mph train, it is unlikely that it would beat air on price, so those who don't care about time are still apt to choose the cheapest option. At best there is a small segment of people who are both willing to give up their time and spend more just to avoid flying, but you can't realistically make trains work with a small number of riders.