Amtrak is very expensive -- as is all rail travel commuter and inter city.   People who live in the Metro area of New York spend hundreds of dollars per month on rail -- even with subsidies!

It's a much better architecture to continue sprawl and to move jobs to where people want to live rather than snake high cost, high maintenance rail around the county.

"It's a much better architecture to continue sprawl and to move jobs to where people want to live rather than snake high cost, high maintenance rail around the county."

Just how would you go about persuading big business (especially resource and raw-materials based Big Bisiness)to move into places where people want to live? It's my experience of  that where people live is irrelevant to big business most of the time- they have other concerns such as the cost of extracting and shipping raw materials, finished goods, etc.

Rail has always suffered in comparison to other modes of transport. If you look at moving people, a road network is far more flexible for short trips. For long trips, air is faster. North America has relatively slow-moving trains, which doesn't help Amtrak. High-speed trains in areas like Europe and Asia fare far better as people-movers becasue distances are shorter and travel times much reduced. For moving anything other than people, however, rail is relatively cheap. It's also a heck of a lot "greener" than air.  It's only real competitor is water transport. Seen any canal barges lately? The horse-drawn kind, I mean.