Why do trains suck in the U.S.?

[GyroMagician]

@WhyBother

In fact, rail is really worth doing when you have one long line of large cities, such that you can just lay down one long route between them. That’s basically the topology of, say, cities Japan.

You mean like Europe? No, actually you’re right, European cities aren’t arranged in anything like a line. But somehow that rail network seems to work quite well. How do they do that?