We do have passenger rail, it's not fast but you can travel the whole country. We also do have intra-city surface and underground lines.
The issue of why we don't have more and faster rail is a multifactorial problem of city size, zoning, spread, and alternate transportation. The US only has 3 major population centers, and they're very wide. The rest of the population lives in thousands of small and midsize cities spread far apart.
This is the worst combination for expensive railways and stations, and requires solid last-mile coverage. This means cars, and if you have cars then they already provide similar speeds, better coverage, more freedom, and lower costs. The only feasible plan is high-speed long-haul that doesn't stop anywhere in the middle, but demand for that is weak because people do live in the middle, and air-travel is faster and cheaper at those distances.
Lower population with a few big cities like Australia is a much better fit. If the US just had 3-5 major cities all along a single coastline then we would also have a similar railway network.
The issue of why we don't have more and faster rail is a multifactorial problem of city size, zoning, spread, and alternate transportation. The US only has 3 major population centers, and they're very wide. The rest of the population lives in thousands of small and midsize cities spread far apart.
This is the worst combination for expensive railways and stations, and requires solid last-mile coverage. This means cars, and if you have cars then they already provide similar speeds, better coverage, more freedom, and lower costs. The only feasible plan is high-speed long-haul that doesn't stop anywhere in the middle, but demand for that is weak because people do live in the middle, and air-travel is faster and cheaper at those distances.
Lower population with a few big cities like Australia is a much better fit. If the US just had 3-5 major cities all along a single coastline then we would also have a similar railway network.