The remaining dregs of Amtrak are the result of the nationalization of the failing private passenger lines in the US.

We used to have passenger rail. Even the desolate nowhere of semi-rural Ohio was well-served. Street cars to get around town, inter-urbans to get between nearby towns, and proper passenger trains to get to points far-away.

It didn't work out. There's reasons why it didn't work, like the literal conspiracy between General Motors and Firestone Tire that deliberately sought to destroy it.

Whatever those reasons were, they are are behind us. So it may seem superficially easy to just put it all back... but it isn't.

When the lines stopped being used, we tore them out. They're gone. And where the lines are gone, old stations are also mostly gone. Cities had once been built around (and because of) rail, but were subsequently built for cars as time marched forward and things continued to expand.

In some cases, whole communities have disappeared in the transition away from rail. In many other cases, we let our central stations decay and rot or demolished them to make space for things like convention centers.

So what's left is what we have: We have cars.

It's easy for me to see a future where I can buy a car and curl up in the back seat with a movie (and maybe a cocktail) while it ferries me from A to B.

That's a future I might actually live long enough to see, and it appears to be inevitable.

And I'd love to be freed of the chains of having to drive myself from A to B.

But I'll be dead and buried before we get passenger rail to be even 1/10th of what it once was.

So I choose to dream practical dreams. I can only play the hand I'm dealt.