Sounds like an opportunity for a private company to test the market!

No sane private company would do a private railroad in the US. NYC in the 1920 put in laws to ensure private rails cannot compete and by the 1950s forced the private companies to give their system to the city.

Note that I just made a statement about the sanity of Texas Central and Brightline.

> The theory is that if we make passenger rail better, then consumers will be more willing to choose it

I think there are other (unacknowledged by public transport advocates) concerns people have with passenger rail. Namely that every light rail car in every major city smells like piss already and feels much more unsafe than your own car. Until that reality is addressed and mentally ill people are not permitted to share the same space as normal, functioning members of society, people will continue to choose their own private transportation whenever possible.

If you don't think this is a reality then you should take a look at some of the shit that happens on BART and NYC subways. My chance of getting pushed off the platform or being the victim of a racially motivated hate crime is 0 in my own car.

1) Amtrak isn't light rail. It definitely doesn't smell like piss.

2) Your characterization of light rail does not remotely resemble the reality my partner and I have experienced in the Boston area. We have yet to ride in a rail car that "smells like piss". It's fast, safe, and inexpensive. We do not have to worry about enduring property damage to our private vehicles, or injury from other drivers. I suspect our experience is not unusual among MBTA riders; per the 2015-17 MBTA Systemwide Passenger Survey [1], 70% of subway riders have access to one or more cars and 82% hold a valid drivers license.

[1] https://www.ctps.org/dv/mbtasurvey2018/index.html

1) I've ridden Amtrak as well, and the sole reason it doesn't smell like piss is because there's a conductor who aggressively checks people's tickets and kicks people off who haven't paid.

2) In my experience Boston was _the_ best light rail system in the US I've ridden by far. Only China was better (because it ran at faster travel speeds and had more modern train cars). You should come to the Bay and experience BART for what light rail in other cities is like. I recommend the Civic Center station and any of the Oakland stations for the optimal experience. Bonus points for if you decide to walk for more than 1 block around said stations at night.

I'm curious what line you're riding and at what times of day. I love the MBTA and rode it for years (Red Line and Green B/D) but I've definitely been on rail cars that "smell like piss" or similar.

I thought that was part of the experience. Red Line in chicago I regularly had schitzophrenic people start to breakdown with violent tendencies in front of me, watch people shoot up drugs, smell a mixture of piss and shit and general stench of months long unwashed clothing of the unhoused. Watch the news and even the CTA employees on the red line have been known to shoot customers whom they disagree with in the back [1].

Public rail in many places is a dangerous, dirty, and chaotic experience. A gritty, anarchistic, and truly American experience. Yet, this is why I loved it. I hope it never changes -- a complete departure from the sterile, arrogant, and uninspiring clinical reality of air travel. I'd rather be stabbed on the red-line than watch it descend into a dystopic clinical, authoritarian, dressdown administered by the TSA in the name of safety.

[1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/27/22998488/cta-wo...

We've made a point to ride all the lines, but mostly ride Red Line (with a dash of Green), plus the Providence commuter rail line. Our rides tend to be during evenings, so the cars aren't sparkling clean. But, so far, the worst we've experienced are some loose french fries.

> The theory is that if we make passenger rail better, then consumers will be more willing to choose it over alternate, less environmentally efficient methods like driving or flying.

Then we don't want these CSX tracks that are shared with freight. We want all new high speed tracks that can compete. Most people in the US have a car, and you need a car most places you want to go. Fast trains mean they are enough faster than a car to be worth it. Otherwise people look at the train and think "but I have a car sitting in my driveway that can get there faster for less money". Most of the cost of a car is fixed (insurance and payments is by time not mile), so the cost to drive one more trip is very low.