This is only half true. Legally, Amtrak has priority, and railroads are required to cede right-of-way to passenger trains. In practice, the railroads don't cede priority nearly as much as they should. This is an ongoing fight. Amtrak has a whole site about it here: https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
The interesting thing about American railroads is that unlike all other forms of transportation in the US, railroads pay property tax. Therefore, to reduce tax bills and improve their books for mergers, many railroads tore up their improvements.
Now consider viewpoints like this Economist article: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai... "America’s system of rail freight is the world’s best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it" and you get why passenger rail is discouraged.
1: As in a single track for both directions, meaning there are limited places where a north-bound and south-bound train can pass each other.
Additionally Amtrak doesn't have right-of-way on those rails, so delays due to freight trains are super common on that section of track.
This means the tracks are not graded for high-speed relative lightweight passenger rolling stock. Also, the passenger trains need to fit into the schedules dictated by the freight traffic.
Which is really a shame. The track from SF through Lake Tahoe runs just past Sugar Bowl and into Truckee, and is about 180 miles. A ski train would be really easy.
I was also surprised at train travel in Norway on my recent visit; I hoped to book a ticket from Oslo to Bergen but it was basically impossible. Only a couple of trains a day, all sold out. I drove instead, which was also a shock, since I spent virtually my entire drive at or below 80kph. The train would have been roughly the same speed -- so, not as bad as your Tahoe example, but not great by continental European standards either :)
Also the commuter/long distance tracks are all owned by the freight liners, so passanger trains have to yield for them. There are also hour+ stops at some stations.
Furthermore, an amtrak will only hit a top speed of 79mph, and only a few times during the journey, while a car can stay at 75mph for most the journey.
You've never driven to Tahoe on a holiday weekend, I see
Train routes don't exist. Outside commuter routes long distance rail basically don't exist in the US, outside a few connectors between major cities.
This is IT: https://trn.trains.com/~/media/files/pdf/map-of-the-month/tm...
Keep in mind the scale here... see that small-looking gap between Flagstaff and Tucson? That's 400km... you could fit most European countries in there.
But still, here with a really fine train grid, the train is much less efficient due to the many stops and many changes you have to make to get somewhere :( It can take up to 2-3 times as much time to get somewhere by train than by car.
The costs of acquiring land for rail projects are also higher, because of very strong property rights.
Basically there are a lot of reasons, some of them are not mere political disagreements.
But I really hope some day the EU will standardise this too, and get more tracks built. I'd love to take a train between Barcelona and Amsterdam. But right now it is 2 hours by plane or 14 by train with 2 changes. And the price has a similar ratio in favour of the plane, which makes the train simply nonviable.
Kind of a lot of problems on top of each other from construction costs to land ownership to right of way to city layouts that make trains rough to work in the US. (which stinks, I LOVE trains. had a nice train commute in Chicago, but those are rare in the US)
Allegedly.
> But there is an enormous amount of reflexive opposition from NIMBYs, Conservatives, and Libertarians.
The greatest obstacles to California's high speed rail project are vote-buying politicians and the voters who do not pay attention or understand what they are doing.
Conservatives and libertarians may have a lot to say about it, I gather that's because it has been such a colossal money pit boondoggle affair; but you may have noticed that conservatives and libertarians don't exactly hold a political majority in California, so I doubt that their objections are a major obstacle to its completion.
The plans they actually began to build with won't even produce much of a service, the target speeds are disappointing and there are so many detours from any meaningful corridor; and we haven't even seen the reality of it yet, which will probably be even more disappointing than the low expectations.
> ...Republicans have killed the projects to replace them _twice_ simply because they are rail projects and passenger rail is 'bad'
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that was probably not why they excluded that project from the budget.
> Allegedly.
Not allegedly, it's actually being built right now. 119 miles of it in fact. It's not the whole system, but it's the IOS that they promised that they would build.
> the target speeds are disappointing and there are so many detours from any meaningful corridor...
The target speed is 220 mph between Gilroy and Burbank which is in line with the current highest speed HSR systems in the world. The route actually makes a fair amount of sense given that the cities in the central valley are not that small, especially since the stations in those cities are designed for trains to express through them. Rather, it makes more sense compared to the I-5 corridor which would have required branch lines to be built, not to mention the other fundamental issues that proposal had.