>>1970155The point is both passenger rail AND freight rail should be treated as infrastructure.
Currently, freight dominates AND is reducing maintenance/inspection times, reducing staffing on trains themselves, making trains longer and longer so they can't fit into most sidings and if they do break down they can be stuck for extended periods of time causing massive delays that ripple across the US.
The FRA has such little ability to oversee rail operations that they GENUEINLY don't know where most trains are at any given time in the US, or what their cargo is. The government basically doesn't know where large shipments of volatile chemicals are going or exactly when they're going through there. Can even be moving through big cities with little to no oversight or safety precautions over the normal rail operation (which is falling compared to the safety standards we should have).
It's only a matter of time until we see something like what happened in East Palestine, Ohio happen in a major city or suburb of a major metro area. We need to take our rail infrastructure more seriously, and we need to understand passenger rail service should be provided at a loss and subsidized by the government for the good of the country. Easier movement of people allows for easier access to new job markets and opportunities to those who wouldn't have access otherwise.
