The US has a lot of trains. Just not passenger trains.
Amtrak, our National passenger rail company, also doesn’t own most of the rail tracks it operates on. It only owns about 300 miles worth of track in the northeast.
Most of the tracks in the US and Canada are for freight, owned and operated by companies that move goods around. Not people.
So most of what Americans, especially in the west, associate trains with is transportation of goods from one place to another. Not necessarily people. Because that’s what most of the infrastructure is for and that’s what they see and run into the most in their day to day lives.
Amtrak has somewhat of a presence in the northeast and sort of not really in California.
Commuter trains? What is this, New York? Never heard of them.
That is why we need to nationalize the rail roads, so that we can actually build a real rail network, the trains are so important in decarbonizing out infrastructure and can only be efficient with real nationalization. Plus it would make it no longer possible for Freight companies, the definition of evil, to block rail projects.