Aren’t the tracks owned by the companies that run the freight trains, rather than Amtrak?

yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never going to happen because they can't attract enough customers.

Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to both natural environments and people's homes. The America where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.

Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed

> Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed

Certainly compared to other modes in most circumstances. If, on a particular route, there's one train a week and 100 planes a day, the train can still be packed while "train passengers" are still rare.

IIRC, Amtrak was created because the railroads were losing money on passenger traffic and wanted to get rid of the service. I imagine that's because the service had a lot more competitors than it did in rail's heyday.

Four trains per day on the route I am referencing

I don't know why people are bringing up hypotheticals that are so far from reality like one train per week. That's just not how trains are scheduled with Amtrak. I take the train on a regular basis and your example is entirely removed from the reality that I have personally observed.

How many planes are there per day on a single route in the Midwest? Because I doubt its hundreds

I've only seen that in the northeast. Don't think you'll see much of that riding from Houston to Chicago or heading out west!

Edit: While I haven't ridden trains in every corner of the USA, the best I saw were in the northeast, and I did have a nice ride from Seattle to Portland once, but in middle America you almost never hear of someone riding a train (my grandmother rode them in Texas in the 1930s and a buddy of mine took the 24-hour trip from Texas to Illinois one time, but those are the only stories I have personally heard around here).

I've started and ended 100 Amtrak trips in Chicago. The train is one of the reasons Chicago (and Memphis) exists.

The Midwest is what I am directly referencing

That tells you the ratio of train seats to train passengers, not the ratio of train passengers to other transport users, nor the ratio of spending on train conveyances for human passengers versus cargo.