I don't think Americans should make yet another sacrifice to appease big business who would rather use rail capacity for freight instead of passenger traffic. For once the American citizens should be the priority here.
"Several factors had combined to bring about this sorry state of affairs. Services and rates were tightly regulated. Companies were obliged to run passenger services that could not make a profit."
Are you suggesting that rail companies should again be forced to offer unprofitable passenger services until again a "fifth of rail mileage was owned by bankrupt firms."? Why should passengers be a priority? The most economical use of the railways should be the priority.
so we should cause freight prices to go up (which will increase the cost of food, clothing, stuff that literally everybody needs and buys), so that travel prices go down?
who has time and money to travel? not the poor.
who buys food? everybody, including the poor.
Is it in Americans' interests that more freight should go by road, at a higher cost, so some Americans can travel by train? It's not a simplistic 'big business bad, passenger trains good' argument.
If it's 1 to 1 then yes. People cost a lot more to transport on roads than bulk freight so it’s a net gain to the economy.
Edit: The total cost to the economy to send a single person per car is about 60c/mile if you include the cost of maintaining and expanding highways / increased congestion on existing highways. It costs to use busses, but the benefit is primarily from getting people out of private cars and high speed trains are much better at this.
