It's really not. Florida for all its wrongs is actually showing this to be feasible. Decades of attempts at building rail in the state floundered and failed ove

It's really not. Florida for all its wrongs is actually showing this to be feasible. Decades of attempts at building rail in the state floundered and failed over and over again but Brightline is finally actually making good stable progress. And this isn't just some new company that popped up out of nowhere. This is more or less the same group that had been attempting passenger rail in the state for the last 15 years or so. What changed is they stopped trying to sell it as a public infrastructure project and instead sold it as a purely private project that is funded by bonds which only come out at a loss to the government when the project succeeds (and the companies have to pay back with interest if it fails). But now that Brightline has been shown to be viable, politicians in the state are bending over backwards to allocate land for routes (for example republican politicians allocated a route along I-4 from Orlando to Tampa in near record time). They are pursuing their next sets of routes in the state including the aforementioned Orlando-Tampa route, an east coast up to JAX route, and numerous local commuter rail routes from the surrounding counties into Miami. All it takes is one good success and everyone who was otherwise staunchly against it starts moving heaven and earth to spread the boon to their constituents.