Amtrak hasn't worked out. The USPS no longer needs mail sorting cars, and air travel has been deregulated and is highly cost competitive. The Amtrak system sho

Amtrak hasn't worked out. The USPS no longer needs mail sorting cars, and air travel has been deregulated and is highly cost competitive. The Amtrak system should just be abolished, except in the North East corridor where they own much of the tracks. Remove the prohibition from mixing freight and passenger cars, and in fact partially subsidize freight carriers having an Amtrak car at the back of most every freigt train... partially subsidized to ensure they will making stops in the small remote cities without other transit options. Modernize the systems to allow bypassing stops with no-one waiting to get on or off, and use more cameras and intercoms with fewer on-train employees to keep costs down while still supervising and assisting passengers. Technology is marching on, and if Amtrak doesn't make these sorts of changes soon, it'll become entirely redundant. Passenger trains are faster and more efficient than automobiles right now, but a near-future with self-driving, fully electric vehicles on non-pneumatic tires could be faster, cheaper, and less polluting than passenger rail.