Trains are more efficient than planes, and trucks. They can haul a lot more goods, can travel farther distances, and in many location trains can travel at 70 mph (possibly 80 mph). Don't forget the US is a vast land mass (if you re in the dead center of Texas and travel 8 hours in any direction you will still be in Texas) compared to Europe, Japan, and Australia and our cities for the most part are not as compressed together. We do have short run light rail in many parts of the US, but again they are not priority over freight. And we do have the pretty useless AMTRAK passenger train.
Yes we have a lot of issues with our train infrastructure. Remember US rail is NOT owned by our government (like Europe, Japan etc. are) it is privately controlled, and in the olden days rail wars were fought because sharing was not an option.
AMTRAK is part government and private; however it's lost billions since it was conceived in the 1970s. They also have to share track with freight. Tax payers do NOT want to spend billions (plus over runs) on rail. Why? because that's not our style. We prefer driving.
So is the rest of the world higher speed for freight and passenger? Probably. Again they do NOT have the large distances to travel as is in the US, and train travel has not really been a money maker for our nation.