Why is taking a train as expensive as a a plane ?

Railroads in the USA own and maintain their rails, bridges, traffic control, and the land they keep for their services.

Airplanes only mainntain their service equipment and the rest is subsidized by the tax payers as with over the road highway haullers.

If a plane takes 1 hour for the trip and a train takes 5 hours, the railroad has to pay 5x as much in wages as the airline does.

Plus airports have a lot more flights and passengers than a typical train station does, so infrastructure/overhead costs per passenger are much higher for a train.

I have to agree with the question America should has built a cross country high speed rail as in European nations but 

To answer your question trains are fairly expensive to build rail , pay workers , maintain and operate the trains and rails services of travel .

Plane - Pros you usually get to a long distance destination a lot faster if your cool with being in the sky .

Cons - Its crowded with  little leg room to walk around and to much check in time to get boarded on a plane .

Bus -  Pros well its the easiest way to board and convient while usually the cheapest way to get anywhere and truly to me the bus is the best option for very short travel .

Cons - Well there no room to move around and it takes many stops at times and of course its slow in long distances .

Trains - Pros its the best option or would be for destinations for 200 - 500 miles ( if it was purely high speed rails ) and typically there more leg room with space and can walk around .

Cons - It can be a bit pricey and take a long time to get somewhere in a very long distance ( traveling cross country ) and does take many stops as the bus , if something blocking the rail its gets delayed and its rarely an option to get around it but ....

IDK. I was offered plane, AMTRAK,or bus to Santa Maria. Price was exactly the same..

Plane: would have to Drive to SFO to get it. Faster, though. Lunch was free, even drinks available but $$

.Bus. Very Slow. Sometimes only 45 MPH. Stops at Every bus stop, sometimes Layovers. Took me 24 hours to get from Tucson to Wichita, with 4 layovers, 4 bus changes. OK city was at 4 AM. Could Not Sleep....no Food, could Not leave seat.

Train:  Just take bus  to station. An express, actually, much Faster than the bus. I took the train...more for my money  and could Walk Around inside, to different cars. Lunch was available but pricey,

Competition.    

Because it's expensive to maintain the tracks.  And because the train is slower, so they have to provide you with a seat for longer.

My most recent rail trip was a few years ago for a 4 hour journey.  The rail ticket was roughly the same as a flight cost.

Sure, I could have flown and the flight itself would have been less than an hour BUT we would have had to go to the airport and more intense/time consuming security.  At our destination, we would have been much farther outside of town compared to a centralized rail station. So for actual travel time ( including the mandatory check-in time for domestic flights ), there wasn't really that much of an overall time difference 

Then there were the accommodations on the rail car itself.  The seats were wider and offered far more leg room.  There was the option to walk around.  The rail car had wi-fi available as well.

Bad management and greed/graft for several decades.

They do not have to be expensive. eg. I recently did a job on a machine in Sweden for a customer.

The trains there are amazing; all electric, mostly running at 160kph (100mph) when more than a couple of minutes away from a station.

Cost - £17 for a week totally unlimited use in and between the two cities I was staying and working in.

From Sweden back to the airport in Denmark cost £8

(And trains running either every 20 mins or 30 mins, depending on destination).

They make the UK rail system look very primitive and a total rip-off, disgusting considering it was one of the most advanced in the world in the 1960s.

Trains are slower, but they are also much more pleasant to ride on.  You can easily get up and walk around.  You can often sit across from other people with a small table in the middle and play cards or a game.  They usually have a car where you can usually get some food and possibly even an actual dining car.  You get to see the scenery while taking the train.  And depending on your ticket, you may be able to get off the train at one stop and catch a later train and resume the trip.

Granted, I would not want to take the train all the way across the country, but traveling say under 500 miles would be kind of fun on a train I think.

I agree with you 

trains are expensive because they have lots of personal and maintenance to do 

but yes planes are much cheaper