> Aviation is simply much more efficient.

Efficient, how? It uses much more energy, makes more noise and creates more pollution.

The speed has very little to do with the funding model. Flights were still faster in the 1970s when many state-owned airlines operated, and trains are little different when private companies run them (see: several European countries).

Don't forget about those rails. A lot of energy is locked in them, not to mention land. Planes need airports and nothing more.

Planes also spend their time where there is less wind resistance to deal with.

Trains are still a win, but it isn't as clear as it seems.

Tying up capital equipment and personnel for much less time to serve the same journey. Consider San Francisco to Chicago, a route I have done both ways. The flight is 5 hours, the train ride 50 hours. A 737 is more expensive than the California Zephyr trainset, but not by 10x.

I'm not sure what noise has to do with efficiency - I doubt that the energy expended on vibrating the air is physically or economically significant - but it is worth noting that trains are loud. Particularly because regulations written in blood require that they blow their horns three times at every level crossing at all hours.

(Among developed countries I'm familiar with) it's only the USA that has the excessively loud train horns at level crossings, and a lot of crossings. In Europe, lights, bells (or a beeper thing) and automatic barriers are used instead, sometimes with automatic or manual infrared/visible cameras to confirm the crossing is clear of road vehicles.

Point-to-point travel is much faster and more efficient with planes than with trains.

Knowing the history of railroads, this comment is truly spit-take worthy. Railroads are my go-to example for what the "model" capitalistic industry looks like. Historically, the investment boom/bust cycles were driven in large part by railroad mania--most railroads in the 19th century were funded by public stock offerings to raise the capital to build them, producing and popping investment bubbles with almost decadal frequency.

At least in the US, there was surprisingly little public subsidy of railroads. The big exception is in the west, where many lines were financed in part by land grants, but this is not true all of lines (the Great Northern Railroad, for example, had no land grants)--and most of the railroads in the east has no land that could be granted to them at all. Antitrust laws in the US specifically originate from regulating the anticompetitive practice and local monopolies that railroads had. Indeed, many of those practices that motivated the law are now being repeated by airlines without a corresponding modern push to regulate those practices away.

Actual state ownership of the US is rare, both now and historically. The big exceptions are the temporary nationalization of the railroads during WWI and the assumption of the bankrupt Penn Central assets into Conrail (which was divvied up between CSX and NS in 1999). Of course, the US may be unusually competitive on the world scene for modern railroads, with US/Canada essentially three geographic duopolies (BNSF/UP, CP/CN, and CSX/NS).

to give you a bit of history from the European perspective.

most railways in Europe have been build by state programs to kickstart further industrialisation during the later half of the 19th century. prior to rail, the only way to transport bulk goods like coal and iron ore efficiently was through canalways. rails solved the issue of getting the raw goods to the industrial centers where people lived to produce goods efficiently. it also allowed for rapid expansion of cities and town and made cities and town with no access to a waterway far more viable.

privatization of rail only happenend after the cold war, and is mostly seen as a failure in most countries.

I believe that's largely a Central/Eastern European perspective, and doesn't apply as much to Western Europe. Countries like the UK, France, Switzerland started out with entirely private systems and nationalized them later (early 20th century).