>>1518162>>1519678The idiotic thing about freight companies prioritizing their own trains is that it's been illegal since 1973 and there's even a oversight agency in the DoT to make sure it doesn't happen, but it's unstaffed (and hasn't been since Obama iirc) and even if it were staffed it would be toothless.
What should happen is there should be people staffing the Surface Transportation Board and they should levy extremely harsh fines on freight railways for delays to Amtrak trains (think $10,000 per minute of dispatcher-caused delay). In 2018 the freight railroads caused Amtrak 55,000 hours of delays. Even at $1000 a minute that's an extra $3 billion per year Amtrak could use for maintenance of way, rolling stock acquisition, and infrastructure work. Make the fine higher and I imagine a lot of freight companies would suddenly feel the incentive to actually follow the law.
