It’s actually worse than that- amtrak was a reagan thing, which was meant to intentionally fail so they could give the passenger rail lines to big freight companies as well.

It was literally meant to fail so they could privatize it, but Amtrak pulled off a miracle. Amtrak is actually really, really good in places they can own their own rail- it’s why they’re really not allowed to build or own their own rail anymore.

Other democratic countries all manage to have perfectly fine rail systems, it’s not solely the domain of totalitarian governments- just functioning governments.

Much like healthcare, it’s literally just the US government that fucks it up.