In short, "yes, because it's railroads". There's not much else that requires so much public resources (land) and capital; yet for that railroads deliver a broad

In short, "yes, because it's railroads". There's not much else that requires so much public resources (land) and capital; yet for that railroads deliver a broad capability (hyper thermodynamically efficient over land transport) that is not replicable via any other technology or practice. If we don't develop/improve that capability, we give up a tremendous amount of ability. If we let it consolidate and then atrophy, we regress to a huge degree. It'd be like privatizing the roads and then allowing the closure of the small farm roads because they're "not profitable". It'd be massively short sighted and would cause problems for decades, maybe over a century as we sort things out and get back on track. It's what we're in the middle of with railroads.