Fast Trains
(2nd floor)

People think that railroads exist to run trains; but this isn't exactly true.   There are no US railroad companies that have ever had the word "Train" in their names.   Railroads exist to build roads - made of rails - and then operate trains; but without the track there's no "rail-road" or "trains".  In the US, these roads-of-rails have always been financed with borrowed money, usually 30+ year bonds, which require interest to be paid on them and - at maturity - the bond money returned.   The US railroads are private infrastructure companies which maintain their own track, tunnels, bridges, and terminals, and pay taxes on all of it.  (This situation applies to Canada too.)

In the rest of the world, by contrast, the roads-of-rails are built and maintained by the same organization that builds the highways, the airports, air-traffic control system, and the waterways (locks and dams): a department of the government.    Therefore, the long-term financial risk of the infrastructure is carried by the government (which means no risk at all).    The companies using government supplied infrastructure pay a fee to use it, but incur no long-term risk. 

In the US, all the non-railroad infrastructure is built and maintained by the government too.  So,  if a trucking company, airline, or barge company decides to stop using (or use less of) the infrastructure, they don't have to keep paying interest on the bonds or the taxes on the unused infrastructure (that's the government's responsibility).   Railroads, however, do have to pay; they own it so they incur the risk; for 30+ years.  This investment risk reduces the amount of infrastructure the railroads will invest in to the bare minimum, resulting in little excess capacity.

In 1957, the peak speed year for US railroads, passenger trains were running at 65+ mph average speeds (not top speeds, average speeds) on 77,460 route miles, which was highly competitive with highways built before the Interstate Highway System.  But investing to build tens of thousands of miles of new track, using private funds, to complete with the Interstate Highway System would have been impossible in the 1950's.  The railroads at this time were still onerously regulated as though they were monopolies, their freight market share was already declining, and the government was also actively investing in competing transportation modes beside the highways, namely: waterways and airports.  This prevented the railroads from raising the private capital needed to build a higher-speed rail system; the risk was too great (no-one can compete with something financially backed by the government).  So, by 1970, only 13 years later, most railroads would be near bankruptcy, in bankruptcy, or financially unviable.  The miles of existing high-speed track were an expense the private railroad couldn't afford to keep, let alone build more of. 

Meanwhile, by 1970, the (department of) French Railroads had a pre-TGV train operating between Paris and Lyon at an average speed of 86 mph over 317 miles by incrementally increasing the speeds over those same 13 years.   The US lost the opportunity for that incremental improvement in speed, and is now many decades behind (but, there's always Hyperloop).  

Of course not.   It was just a set of circumstances that worked against trains in the US.   

The circumstances were:

1. The European countries, during "the era of the railroad" (say 1870 - 1945), were efficiently, and - at times - enthusiastically, slaughtering each other; with Japan joining the fray in the late 1930's.  The results of this 70+ years of carnage and destruction was that their railroads were decimated, and private investors weren't interested in throwing away more money - or the private investors were dead and no longer existed - to rebuild; so the surviving governments had to step in. Many European railroads were taken over by their various governments prior to WW2 (World War II, 1939 - 1945).

2. The US railroad companies during this entire time were private companies.

3. The US railroads couldn't participate in the Post WW2 era of "free money".   There has always been free government money, but the biggest lesson learned by the smart-n-savvy people from WW2 spending was that "free money" was the "road" to prosperity; and consequently, the spigot of government loot became a torrent.  After WW2, the US government showered money on "friends" in the form of roads, water projects, airports, and military construction.  However, government money can never be given directly to "friends", it has to be indirectly given; and unfortunately - for the railroads - they owned their own infrastructure.   

If, during the Post WW2 era, the railroads had already been "just another agency of the government", like in European countries, there is no doubt that railroads would have participated in the post WW2 infrastructure spending frenzy.  A new Interstate Rail System could have been blasted through every city in the country, just as the Interstate Highways were.  But, remember, government money can never be given directly to "friends", so there was no way for the railroads to participate in the construction festivities.   The railroads complained to the press, saying: "it was unfair" to give money to their competitors; the spending was "anti-free-enterprise", etc...  But, in the end, they just sounded like immature libertarians or cry-babies.  There was nothing that could be done;  all the government loot flowed to the railroad's competitors and the railroads were almost driven into bankruptcy by 1970.  The lesson learned was:  if others are getting "free money", don't complain about, figure-out how to get some for yourself (it seems most people have figured that out now).  

But it says allot for the natural efficiency of the train that, despite "free money" to competitors and onerous government regulation, the railroad industry did not die.   Although to took 10 more years, the government deregulated the railroads, and the railroads still exist today as private tax-paying profitable corporations.  Railroads in the US haul about 10% of freight as measured by revenue, or about 35% as measured by tonnage.  Which, is much better than the Europeans and Japanese do!  

Amtrak runs the sad remnants of the private passenger train system that existed in 1971.  And, Amtrak only operates passenger trains, not freight trains.    However, Amtrak only owns about 600 miles of track, which is mostly in what is called the North East Corridor; between Washington DC and Boston.  This amounts to less than 1% of the total railroad route miles in the US. This corridor consumes most of Amtrak's meager subsidy.  Amtrak also (grudgingly) operates about 21,000 miles of passenger trains using the track of the private freight railroad companies.  As private railroads have little excess capacity, this is why Amtrak trains are often late.  An Interstate Highway has a minimum of 4 lanes.   The majority of railroad routes have only one track (lane), and trains that need to pass each other are required to do so at short sections of double track (2 lanes), spaced many miles apart;  meaning one of the trains usually needs to stop.  The railroads only invest in enough infrastructure to keep their railroads marginally competitive with other modes of freight transportation; modes which don't have to invest in their own infrastructure.  This means that Amtrak trains are running on railroads built by private companies, specifically for freight service, at speeds generally less than 50 mph.   This is why most passenger trains run slower now than they did in the 1920's.  The 77,460 miles of 65+ mph track from 1957 is long gone; in fact, some of it has been abandoned and is gone for good.  

But, even worse, Amtrak is "officially" supposed to "make a profit".  This means there's a government (like) organization, in a highly competitive - customer service oriented industry,  attempting to do what private railroads already proved couldn't be done between 1950 and 1970: which is to make a profit on passenger trains when the entire cost of privately owned infrastructure is charged to the trains.   So, Amtrak has been living its entire business life in a fantasy that can never be realized.  It's pathetic, and sad (Mr Anderson is Amtrak, but who is Mr Smith?)

The original cost, for the entire project - Los Angeles to San Francisco - was "estimated" at about 10 billion bucks (give or take a "B").   The currently built segment, running from roughly Bakersfield to Merced, through the flatlands of the Central Valley, where there are no mountains - so no need for expensive tunnels and bridges - cost about 30 billion bucks (but who's counting, literally).   The rest of the line,  which still needs to be built across a mountain to LA and another mountain to San Jose, and finally to San Francisco, will cost many many many many many more "B's".   But, as they say, it's only (other people's) money.    Plus, there's some doubt if the resulting trains will actually be able to attain the "less than 4 hour schedule" needed to attract riders and be "profitable", as the route was detoured through Palmdale (some "friends" live there).  There's also some doubt if the project actually exists to run trains;  it might just exist to spend "free money" with the resulting track being an annoying, but necessary, byproduct of enriching "friends" (it was Beautiful Story though, and that's the primary purpose of politicians: to create Beautiful Stories for "the people" to obfuscate who actually gets the "free money", who - of course - are the "friends").