Those cities are "grappling" with problems of their own creation by decades of NIMBY zoning and investment policy. We should have more and better rail infrastructure but part of that in terms of commute is insuring that the stations service enough patrons to justify building them. Low density sprawl quarter acre stick houses dotting miles of windy lane and a half road without sidewalk connected by 4 lane boulevards are ill fit to benefit from a rail station even just a few miles away. The opponents of urban development would just decry such projects as wastes of money when ridership doesn't compare well to European and Asian contemporaries because everything beyond the station is so poorly planned.

The solution to the urban housing crisis was, continues to be, and will be until its done the building of more housing. A lot more. Density, at every price. Without mandated parking, without vertical clearance limits, without per-unit size limits, without the ability for NIMBYs to stall out or shut down expansion efforts for their own personal gain. Nothing else will cure the ailment - all else is just treating the wound.

Your part of the country may be different, but the major cities (typically rail hubs) in mine have fairly dense towns at regular intervals along the tracks leading out of the city.

Unfortunately, for the past century the larger cities have been steadily sucking their population and talent away. Hub and spoke rail systems are an excellent way to revitalize these towns and encourage population balancing.

Because not everyone wants to live in a Singaporean econobox.

Traditionally, the limitation on this has been weakness / corruption of local government vs the major freight railroads.

Amtrak, with proper Congressional support, could play an interesting part in reopening existing rail to passenger traffic.

Not sure why you think rail cannot service suburbs. I grew up 20 miles outside of Chicago in the suburbs and and we had a train station in the middle of town. Furthest you could be from the train station and still be in the town was about a mile.

Short run regional doesn’t have to be Amtrak’s mandate when there are plenty of feeder lines like NJT and Septa able to step in. The problem is not rail vs road. The problem is that rail becomes a sinkhole for public fantasyland spending. Take for example the article cites how Amtrak got stuck with the bill for hurricane sandy infrastructure repairs never mind its legacy of bailing out Passenger rail service in the 70s. God only knows it would have gotten the ultimate bill for California’s insane rail project when it failed. The issue is there aren’t enough controls to keep out of control allocations, spending and let’s just call it what it is: corruption, greed and graft, from entering the system. This idea that we can’t build roads cost effectively while we can build rail is simply preposterous - Acela was predicated on the idea that twenty years ago Amtrak could figure out how to develop high speed rail and yet Acela beats the regular line by ten minutes between dc and ny and that’s largely due to fewer stops. I’m sorry to be a downer but I have zero confidence in a national rail initiative. If metros and regions want to improve commuter times great but there’s just nearly zero rationale to build more Amtrak infrastructure.