re: Can high speed rail work in the United States?

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that we can be exactly like Europe

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Europe has actually been trending the other way. There are now a bunch of independent and low cost airlines connecting just about every European city.

In the past there were only the big national airlines (Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, etc.) and flights were relatively sparse apart from major cities and they were very expensive. Now there are airlines like EasyJet, RyanAir, Wizz Air, Norwegian, Eurowings, etc. that offer prices that are cheaper than the high speed trains and get you there quicker. Sure people will still take a high speed train from Brussels to Paris or Munich to Frankfurt, but they are hopping on planes a lot more now and expanding their travel and business horizons.