I grew up in a small town in PA.  Every few years they'd rip up the streets to resurface them and you'd see bricks and trolley lines under the blacktop.  This was a town of 16,000 people and at one point there was a trolley there.  The investment in small communities was orders of magnitude higher at one point.  And yet, somehow the narrative from 1994 to 2007 was that the government was wasting precious taxpayer dollars on unneeded public programs.  Think about someone advocating for a light rail line to be built in a small rural community.  They'd be pilloried.

The problem with Amtrak is largely that they are the lowest priority along all the tracks that they serve.  I ride them frequently, and while they have control or share tracks with happy-to-help commuter rail agencies, once you get outside the Northeast Corridor, they often share single-track lines with freight services who are not inclined to give Amtrak any right-of-way.  Because it's single-track and Amtrak doesn't own the tracks, it's not uncommon to have to sit in a siding for an hour waiting for a freight train to pass.  Last time I took Amtrak from LA to Arizona, we went about 30mph between LA and Palm Springs, but then upped pretty quickly to 80+mph outside of Palm Springs; the problem is that LA is a freight hub and the track is in poor condition.  Where Amtrak either owns or shares the track with commuter rail service, things work great.  When they have to beg at the feet of freight services (who largely don't care if their trains only go 30mph), they're at the mercy of the freights.

By the way, Amtrak used to serve Phoenix, but the tracks have degraded terribly and Amtrak has no authority to repair them, so now it serves a tiny town about half an hour south of Chandler.  Again, not anything within the control of Amtrak - Congress successfully created an agency with numerous problems and no authority to solve them, and then blames them for everything that goes wrong.

The problem isn't Amtrak, the problem is that the FRA has an absolute disdain for passenger rail service.  Upgrade and double-track the routes between major cities and Amtrak suddenly becomes a fast and reliable service.

By the way, Amtrak charges that amount to keep local traffic from gumming up long-distance traffic between Boston and NYC.  I used to take the Boston/NYC train all the time, and we had terrible problems with overcrowding once commuters started piling on in Connecticut, or in reverse, when commuters piled on in Providence - apparently they didn't mind paying the cost for a 10-minute faster trip.  Amtrak needs commuters to take the MNR or the MBCR because Amtrak isn't a commuter service.  It may be $48 to go from NYP to New Haven, but it's just slightly above $50 to go from NYP to Boston.  If they have a ton of reservations between New Haven and NYP, they can't take any more reservations for Boston to NYP (if you were ever wondering why all of the NE Corridor service requires reservations, that's why - to keep the trains from becoming commuter trains).

The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner, which follows two commuter rail lines in Los Angeles, does have that kind of capacity, so commuter rail tickets are also valid on Amtrak local trains.

Me too. Only in America would we still be in the dark ages about rail travel. Around the world, people are moving about faster and cheaper.

Check out CA High Speed Rail, which will do exactly that, and recently got funded through 1A.  You're right about the airlines - a lot of them are starting to dislike running the SFO-LAX shuttle, and would rather put their resources in more profitable routes, since that one often sparks price wars similar to BOS/NYC/IAD - once that's up and running, probably only Southwest will devote major resources to the shuttle.

Fully electric cars are still in the "someday" category.  Efficient train service is very much a reality.  

There's no guarantee that we'll get those fleets of electric transport up and running on a wide scale by the time we need them.  Work on electric cars, sure, but right now we need trains, STAT.

basically staked his re-election on rail.  It's good to see interest picking up nationwide for this.