My son won the county geography bee when he was in middle school. The prize was a free Amtrak trip to the state finals in Chapel Hill. To get there from our Western NC county via Amtrak required driving to Greenville, SC, catching the train to Washington DC, changing trains and then heading back south to Durham, NC.
Amtrak is geared to benefit the NE Corridor and residents thereof who want to get to south Florida. I suppose the LA to SF and NE Corridor to Chicago get a bit of traffic. Amtrak is useless to Flyover country and too expensive.
Put good high speed buses on an express lane on the Interstates with terminals at major shopping malls and they would dominate the less than 200-250 mile intercity travel. At least until the TSA screwed things up.
The people who are changing the world are the people working on self driven automobiles. That’s the future of transportation. Not these gussied up 19th century rattletraps.