Ok, that's a start. But my point is that US rail treats passenger traffic as a second class citizen and it doesn't have to be that way.

Mandating Positive Train Control and adding in track to allow better multiplexing of traffic could be done for a fraction of the HSR budget.

I think this should be done at a national level (nationalize the rail lines and invest in infrastructure to better utilize a very constrained resource). Yeah, crazy talk.