A train with 500 seats running London to Manchester costs about £4/mile in electricity, of which 20p will be VAT (which I think is reclaimed) - so tax would be about £35, or 7p per passenger.
A flight of a 150 seat plane from London to Manchester attracts £3900 in tax.
Not in most of the USA (well, it is electric generated from a diesel hybrid). Electrification over large distances is expensive, the only country to have done that so far are the Chinese (and even then they don’t bother with way out Tibet...yet).
All of Sweden's rail is electric and most of Europe's too.
> In europe, jet fuel isn't taxed at all (but train/car fuel is) which often makes flying the cheaper option. From london, I can fly to several european cities cheaper than I can get a 2 hour train within the UK. Which is pretty ridiculous.
Australia and America are irellevent. Almost all long distance trips in Europe is electricity
In Europe I usually take the train places. If it's 2-3h away by train it's usually faster to take the train, and it's often (though not always) comparable or cheaper on price. In the US, I virtually never take the train, there simply aren't adequate options. The distances tend to be much larger, and we simply haven't built the infrastructure. We could build it, but that's proven quite hard (see CA high speed rail and efforts to modernize northeast corridor) for both political and practical reasons. NY<->DC I often take the bus, it's cheaper and only a slight time penalty vs. the train.
4/5 people sounds like a big number but those people are much more likely to start eating meat or buy a car at first than to fly. That's a way bigger problem environmentally.