It's not insane. Rail is just fundamentally more expensive for many routes. Short haul flight is typically run at a profit despite taxes, whereas intercity rail

It's not insane. Rail is just fundamentally more expensive for many routes. Short haul flight is typically run at a profit despite taxes, whereas intercity rail is run at a loss and subsidised. A big factor that affects costs both for running airliners and trains is turnaround time. Faster turnaround means more revenue per vehicle, pilot, etc. and planes are multiple times quicker than trains for most city pairs. Train infrastructure is also very expensive. It's costly to acquire the land and build suitable tracks, then the track maintenance is a very labour intensive task. Thousands of people are employed to inspect tracks, clear foliage, etc. Every city needs to be linked up to the rail network, whereas planes just go through the sky for free. Of course, you might argue tracks just need to be built once then they continue generating revenue for hundreds of years, which is true (maintenance aside), but as ridership increases and that track reaches capacity, the ticket pricing becomes a way of managing demand since typically building more track is cost prohibitive. With planes, if there is unserved demand, a new low cost carrier will spring up to handle it. Of course, if you were to factor in emissions fully, that could significantly tilt the tables in favour of rail.