It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing.
A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying.
Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places.
Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere.
Very few people in our ageing societies want this sort of life and you have to incentivise them to do it, which adds costs.
> A crew member of a train has a very demanding job.
The ratio of staff on a train to the count of passengers is much lower than on a bus or in a plane. Even less for freight.
> The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying.
This assume either long distance trains or slow trains. This can be solved
Why would have shift to be irregular. Trains run on a schedule.
> Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere.
Just get rid of busy crossings. Build bridges.
I recommend to come to Europe, and especially in France, for a trip in the TGV. Paris to Marseille (650 km) in 3 hours from city center to city center.
You cannot make the cost-efficiency argument without acknowledging all the costs which aviation and automotive travel externalize: air and water pollution, damage to wildlife, global warming, lack of walking/cycling infrastructure, rising sea levels... a disproportionate part of which are born by poor or faraway people who have no choice in all this.
Edit: forgot about noise pollution and about flooding risks (due to impervious surfaces like runways and parking lots).
I also doubt airfields and planes require significantly less maintenance than trains and tracks, but I have not researched that.
Doesn't change the fact that you're increasingly hard-pressed to find anyone willing to do it.
Same goes for any type of public transport. The problem is exacerbated in regions of the world which can't rely on immigrants, like mine. I live in a city of 650k inhabitants. The local public transport authority says that they would need an additional 100 drivers to cover all the routes. No takers for these roles and it has been like that for two years at least, despite incentives.
It's crazy because inadequate public transport causes people to choose cars instead, which in turn produce traffic that further hampers mass transit.
Railways have been winding down for decades now and it got to a point where flying between cities in more accessible, punctual and cheap.
A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying.
Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places.
Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere.
Very few people in our ageing societies want this sort of life and you have to incentivise them to do it, which adds costs.