In Europe passenger trains never wait for cargo to pass. Different priorities.

The US has this type of prioritization enshrined in the same piece of legislation that created Amtrak in the first place.

Actual use of this almost never happens, however.

It happens sometimes, if there's delays and it'd make more sense for a cargo train to go in front of a slower commuter train. But absolutely not on the scale it happens at in the US.

Amtrak delays are terrible even on the northeast regional, which doesn’t share with freight rail.

But they share with commuter rail. And Amtrak and the local commuter rails (particularly Metro North) are locked in a perpetual pissing contest.

European rail services share with other passenger rail as well. Sharing with other passenger rail doesn’t create the same issues.

They’re run by the same company though. The SNCF is notorious in letting long distance trains first, making commuters unhappy.

Sections of passing track?

Most of the American rail network is now owned by freight railroads who have actively dismantled electrification, double or quadruple track, etc.

This is because unlike other forms of transportation, railways are required to pay property taxes, so they're incentivized to have as little improved property as possible.

This seems like it might be the entire crux of the issue? If taxes are incentivising people to reduce lines to the bare viable minimum then that's what you're going to get in terms of service.

In all my days of Amtrak criticism I haven’t heard about property taxes, can you link me a source? (Not doubting you, I would like to read about it)

This varies by state, but:

Minnesota does: https://www.revenue.state.mn.us/railroad-property-tax#

New Jersey does: https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/railroadtax.shtml

Missouri does: https://apps1.mo.gov/stcoriginalassessment/report/CompanyRep...

The problem was so bad at one point that one of the steps taken to arrest the rail industry's decline was to ban property tax discrimination against railroads: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2014/dec/tax-clinic-10....

You never see this in Amtrak discussions, because Amtrak does not own the vast majority of the rails it runs on, and people couldn't care less about private companies. For highways and airports, they're pretty much all on publicly owned land, so they don't pay property tax because that would be silly.

Also, with such high costs it'd be better to just kick the "offending" passenger out. Or lock the doors 10 minutes prior to departure (i.e. plan to depart 10 minutes after the official departure time, but not let new people in during that window).

Ten minutes?? U.K. trains will be open at the station for less less than a minute and a half at the most and that’s plenty. Tube trains will dwell for only 20 seconds and often less - but then that’s because you have 30+ per hour

That's just one example. Lots of things can cause delays.

And your 10 minute plan gets complicated when you consider they pick up passengers at multiple stops along the way. If they waited an extra 10 minutes at every stop they might ending up causing themselves an even bigger delay.

But I don't have specific info on what things are causing the most delays.

Without dedicated passenger rail tracks and doesn't own much of the tracks Amtrak runs, this will always be a problem. But investing on a passenger-only track network in US must be hideous expensive, and I wonder we can see any progress on this from federal government.