If you take into account cost-per-moved-amount-of-cargo trains are dramatically cheaper, even including infrastructure. The only reason we don't use/develop them more is social/political bs not due to choosing the ideal engineering solution for the problem and that solution being planes)

As for electric flight:

1 gallon of jet fuel has like 40 kwh of energy and weighs like 6 lbs. A Ford Lightning has a battery capacity of 100 kwh and that battery weighs 1,800 lbs. Electric flight ain't happening in a big way anytime soon with current battery tech.

The key determinant that tells you whether trains or planes are more cost-efficient is population density. If you have two cities far apart with not much in-between, then it's cheaper to build a couple of airports. If you have loads of other cities along the route, then it'd be cheaper to build a railway. The former case is true for much of North America, and the latter for much of Western Europe and UK.

Commonly cited but not really grounded in reality— lots of places that have made rail work have very similar or worse density characteristics to the coastal US routes that should be a no-brainer:

https://persquaremile.com/2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-fo...