I think the problem is still going to be getting enough people to ride these trains. Outside the major metro areas, there is no practical incentive for people to ride trains.
This is not Europe, large segments of the population do not live huddled in 800 or 1200 square foot urban apartments, nor do they want to.
If you can’t walk to the train how do you get to the train?
Where are you going on the train? To work? Out to dinner? To a movie? On vacation?
I work construction, pretty tough to take my tools on the train. I go out to dinner 4 miles from my house - in my car. We don’t vacation much, my wife will not get on a plane - not out of fear, out of no tolerance for the “airport experience”. A reasonable train station experience might work for her.
All those places that have “better” passenger trains than us have different lifestyles than MOST of the U.S.
What we should really be doing for our quality of life, safety, and for the environment, is getting more freight off the highways and on to trains. We should have never let trucks get to 53’ trailers and 80,000 lbs.
How much better the country might be if the government would have deregulated trains and trucks in 1953 rather than 1983. And if highway trailers had been held to 35’ except for special loads.
I would take a long trip on a train if the service was, A - better, and B - easier to understand. Have you ever been on the AMTRAK website and tried to figure out a trip? It is beyond difficult to understand and navigate.
We should have kept the mail on the trains, so it could continue to fund the passenger service like it did 80 years. That operation is not doing any better with trucks and planes…
“What we want”? I don’t want high speed rail that I would hardly use. i surely don’t want to pay for it.
Sheldon