$200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles.

$4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions.

Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper

You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison.

Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs.

The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.

There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile.

But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.

> But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive

I'm not sure that's true, and I don't see any obvious reasons why that would be the case. Do you have a source to back that up?

Of course we need roads. But the question is how many and how big they need to be.

I gave data showing that the hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on roads supports trillions of miles traveled, while billions of dollars spent on Amtrak (largest rail system in the US) leads to an order of magnitude less miles traveled

Yes but like I said the comparison is totally flawed since you counted all costs for Amtrak but only a subset of costs for car traffic.

If you are convinced roads+cars is an order of magnitude more efficient than rail, maybe you can explain what you think is the cause of that difference. Does rail require more land? Does it require more maintenance hours? Does it require more expensive materials? Does it require higher insurance fees? What's the reason?

operating and capital costs for transit in the USA are absolutely sky-high compared to the rest of the world. It doesn’t cost Japan billions to extend their subway a couple miles, but it does in NYC. The “why” is complex but well documented.

> rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.

The specific people pushing this form of development also want you to live in ultra-high-density housing in an urban center - that's the whole idea and eventuality of this type of development.

You WILL raise your family in an apartment, they WILL ride a bicycle everywhere they aren't using mass transit. You will own nothing and like it.

I don’t really need to jump to that conclusion. I think there’s a certain naïveté that if high-speed rail is ever built in America, it’ll be this wonderfully efficient, cheap system that takes me exactly from where I am to where I wanna go faster than flying. When the reality is that high-speed rail really only makes sense for certain very dense corridors then things like the Philly to Pittsburgh high-speed rail wish is the kind of thing that would be an economic disaster.

The idea isn't to "force" people to do anything, it's to stop PRIORITIZING those people.

Suburbs are on heavy welfare from city centers, who pretty much provide all the money. Roads are prioritized to such an insane degree that everyone suffers. The people you may identify with - low-density huge homeowners - don't realize it, but they're being heavily subsidized by everyone. Particularly those in denser areas.

People would like to live in denser areas and have it, you know, not suck ass. They would like to be able to go anywhere without 1 hour of traffic. They would like to be able to bike without risking their lives. That means SOME money given to urban sprawl and roads needs to be diverted to public transit. Boo hoo.

Heavy welfare — got a source? I hear that all the time but it doesn’t really make sense.