Why important? Because public rail makes it possible to connect city centers. Airports are biiiiiiig, noisy, airplanes pollute a lot, and take off and landing is slow. Sure, planes are faster than trains, but they are a lot less efficient.
Yes, it's hard to manage, yes it needs "roads" (tracks), whereas planes have the air, but planes are very much a luxury.
For many connections that are less than 500km or so apart, a train is faster than a plane. A good rail network also connects smaller towns that don't have an airport. It can also be used to transport goods. All these uses would have to be replaced by cars and trucks if you'd only focus on planes, that's not very good for the environment.
> Half an hour passing security and waiting for boarding
Only 30 minutes sounds optimistic. You also didn't count the time to recover luggage. I've seen people bringing huge suitcases on high speed trains. They couldn't take them in cabin on a flight. Planes are good past the 2 hours flight time IMHO, or across countries where there are no interconnected high speed networks (I'm writing this with Europe in mind.)
My experience with heavy luggage on the French TVG was positive and so efficient Il Duce would be jealous.
My ticket told me where to stand on the platform. When the train pulled to a precise location, I did not have to move any distance. One door for boarding, one for deboarding, passengers did not bump or block each other. Luggage storage located immediately inside train, pass a sliding door to my assigned seat.
The train seemed to stop for less than a minute, we were moving before I took my seat.
No security in boarding station (Morliax), a little over 3 hrs to Paris, 450km as the crow flies.
Perhaps our French colleagues could chime in and let us know if this is a typical experience.
Baggage security in France and other EU countries is quite efficient, not everyone carries bags.
I used to live a 7 minute taxi from Manchester airport. I would usually aim to arrive 30 minutes before wheelsup. It it took longer than 5 minutes from taxi to boarding it was unusual.
In the rare occasions I checked luggage I'd arrive about t-45 and have a beer in the lounge.
Never missed a flight. To get to west london it was far faster than the train and tube, although most of the time I was changing at Heathrow onto a longer distance flight.
Though I seem not being able to find a more recent version of this "classic" anamorphic (deformed) map (I find these the easier way to visualize the abnormalities in connections):
Also, density. Amtrak [and other big country networks] also has money making routes, but that money is nothing when it comes the losses that need to be offset on the other routes.
Why ? I wish connectivity to airports here in India would improve and railways would just die