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In Japan even when including the least efficient rural railways, the system as a whole is still ten times as energy efficient as any other form of land or air transport. To have good railways you need a good railway system serving compact cities and networks of rural communities. 
Why is it that we are ok with operating hugely inefficient highways at huge costs to the public and the environment, while only suffering railways to exist if they can turn a profit? Railways are far more important for healthy local communities: railways connect, highways cut up.
It is trains that allow the elderly to visit hospitals on their own, that allow rural children to travel safely to and from school, that allow tourists to see the untouched countryside between their destinations, that allow poor and blind and rich and healthy the same chances.
