>>1138013Democrats inside Congress didn't really want to champion Amtrak, since their cities don't benefit from it as much as things like airport expansion or internal mass transit expansion. As odd as it is, Amtrak is a Republican thing because Republicans disproportionately benefit from it.
Anyway, as it applies to Obama's HSR plan specifically: the plan ONLY allowed for investment in preselected HSR corridors and said HSR service would have to be self-sustaining operationally afterwards. This was impractical for most of the selected corridors (especially ones in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Texas) and Governors quickly branded it as a boondoggle, shooting it down. The only two states where such a scheme works well are California and New York (who ended up splitting the HSR money between each other), who need entirely new corridors built because the amount of freight and passenger demand exceeds what shared track could plausibly accommodate.
It's just a lack of vision. Nobody really wants to champion Amtrak modernization when Democrats could have more subways while Republicans are content with the existing service. The only states that do show vision do so due to strong local demand for rail transit, namely California, New York, Illinois, Virginia and Michigan. Notably, these are all also states where the majority of HSR projects happens within them, which is to say they have full control over the project. Interstate HSR is where things derail because the issue gets kicked up to DC where it is a low priority.
