$16.4 Billion from Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to Repair and Replace Critical Rail Infrastructure Along Northeast Corridor to Provide Faster and More Reliable Passenger Rail Experience, Create More than One Hundred Thousand Construction Jobs Bidenomics and President Biden’s Investing in America ag...
While I love that they're investing in rail travel, it would be so much better to make a separate national high speed rail service that competes with amtrak. Thier investors can inject their own billions.
Rail is something that works well when organized at government level, not by private entity.
Whether the privatization of the rail exploitation is beneficial or not is subject to debate but privatization of the rail construction and maintenance as been a disaster for the UK and I don't know any other country who attempted to do that.
Building an entirely new rail high speed rail network would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, with a construction time measured in decades and a repayment time of a century, if ever, because passenger rail is very low margin.
In our modern economy where quarterly results are the only thing that matter there is no company that will make that investment.
Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization.