One other point I haven’t seen anyone bring up is the obscene delays inherent in Amtrak service that make it equally unmarketable.
I took the train from Seattle to LA a few years ago & by the time we had hit Portland, the train was already 6 HOURS LATE!!! This was because the freight trains who owned the rails have priority. I asked one of the train staff why we were sitting in the Rockies for 5 hours. What she told me was that the train tracks are owned by the freight lines (in this case Burlington Northern) and therefore, their trains have priority & Amtrak trains need to wait. I don’t know if this was accurate but I do know that on a 3-day trip to Illinois, my trains were running late 70% of the time. So we would also need to make Amtrak more time-effective. Whether this would mean a separate rail line or combining passenger & freight service I don’t know.
