Quoted By:
>why didn't the railroads attempt passenger service after staggers then?
They'd already divested all the equipment, facilities, skillset etc. that would be needed, and had built corporate cultures entirely around freight operations. Additionally, the physical geography of the US had been shaped by further decades of auto-centric development since the 1940s; the physical and cultural landscape was intrinsically far less accommodating (nobody was calling trains communism in 1945). Sprawling development made procurement of straighter RoWs impossible, the automobile ownership ratio continued to increase, billions in taxpayer dollars continued to flow to competing modes, etc. The most promising corridors for passenger rail (especially the NEC) were already operated by public transit. Even with deregulation, it took another twenty years to work through the resulting industry transformation, updating of equipment and practices, consolidation, and so on. Looking at disasters like the Union Pacific- Southern Pacific merger, they had their hands full with freight as it was.
