Can America's Passenger Rail System Ever Catch Up?

"Here's a cosmic question: How much is 30 minutes of a business traveler's time worth? Here's a concrete (well, concrete and steel) answer: about $13.5 billion.

Sounds a little pricey, even for us self-important titans of industry. But British train interests have just thrown an additional $13.5 billion into its side of the already popular Eurostar, which now zips between London and Paris in just two hours and 15 minutes. Launched with appropriate pomp and circumstance three weeks ago, the new, improved Eurostar is 30 minutes faster than Amtrak's Acela, which requires two hours and 45 minutes to ply a similar distance between New York and Washington."

"Why do European business travelers have a 30-minute jump on us? Well, one reason is the amount we're willing to invest. The U.S. Senate is proposing to spend just $11.4 billion to keep the entire nationwide Amtrak network running for the next six years...

Another reason is plain old mismanagement. Despite everything you learned in school (remember that golden spike?) or saw in the movies, America has never known what to do with its passenger railroads. Nobody really wants to run them. Nobody really wants to fix them. Very few people want to take a clear-eyed look at whether we should even have a "national" passenger railroad. And it's pretty evident that nobody wants to pay for one. So Amtrak keeps clickity-clacking from one taxpayer-funded crisis to another."