Yeah the political part is what needs to change. No party really seems to be interested in helping people who can’t afford a car get around in cities or between them affordably.

The idea of running the trains along existing interstates is to avoid having to buy land or claim imminent domain. We only do that for oil pipelines I reckon. Fighting to run tracks thru peoples land would take decades.

Most of our medians in rural areas are quite large. The tracks could be elevated in tighter spaces just like we elevate stupid highway ramps 100ft in the air whenever needed (houston). Train can go over whatever it needs to. Trains I’ve ridden in china have all sorts of elevated tracks since many areas are densely populated. No it won’t be cheap but neither are 15 lane highways

Yeah I think if we are gonna get serious about rail travel in the US we need to build our own passenger lines. One thing I’ve always wondered is why we can’t just use the median/side road of interstates for new rail construction? Does anyone ever discuss this? You could wave at cars sitting in traffic! The land is already there for the taking. It would be a great project for job creation and jobs are also needed to maintain trains/rails and run the train service. Seems like a win. But hey let’s keep dumping trillions into concrete for cars…one more lane should do it

It sucks that we have given freight railroads like CSX so much power here. If you know an attorney ask about how to get the railroad to do anything they don’t want to.