Not really. Tokyo-Osaka is going to be a bit under $200 whichever way you might choose. Maybe rail is $30 cheaper but it's a 15% difference rather than say 50%+.

In Europe it's usually much cheaper to get a low cost flight than the train.

Infrastructure is expensive. For example, the project to upgrade state route 99 in California, which parallels the High Speed Rail tracks for about 130 miles, to Interstate standards was projected to cost $22 billion ten years ago [1]. A lot of the huge costs are from the infrastructure debt of refusing to pay for a rail network, and for destroying a lot of the network that was in place. The HSR system will give a lot of benefits for a substantial amount of the state in terms of giving a modern transit backbone.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/economic_development/studi...

Its a hell of a lot easier to fly over the dozens or hundreds of different landowners and jurisdictions than it is to convince each of them to allow you to build a giant railroad through them

The us rail infra was built when this wasn't an issue or could be solved by sending some heavies in or bribing the right people.

I'm interested in finding out more about this issue