“Private railroads rebuild roadbed all the time, especially to handle increased freight business; if the feds would get out of the way, they could do it with passenger trains too.”
Railroads rebuild roadbed all the time but not to the specs of the fast passenger era.
That era featured track that was tilted like a NASCAR oval to allow trains to fly around curves. Railroads could invest the money back then because they owned intercity travel.
Well that near monopoly vanished after WWII and there is no more economic rationale for maintaining such high speed track. Now only wastrel politicians will do something like that.
Yes; federal regulations don’t make it affordable to build tracks to the current high-speed standards. That’s why I keep saying that the feds need to get out of the way and stop micromanaging.
The “near monopoly” never existed; that’s propaganda. And it’s the federal government doing the “competing” against the railroads rather than private industry building highways and airports. Trust funds have to go; the highways and airports never should have been public works projects, because that gives the government power it doesn’t deserve, never mind inducing the public that accepts federal highway and airport control to call for public passenger rail on a greater scale too.