Offering shitty, expensive service. It's not like customers can use a competing rail line, so every dollar you invest in customer service is a dollar out of your pocket.
My experience of American railways as a tourist is having to show my passport to book a ticket from Davis to Sacramento (I assume I also did that on other trips like to SFO but don't remember), and it being expensive.
My experience in the UK and Germany is show up, pay, go, and it being cheaper.
US consumer rail way is a quasi public corporation (Amtrak) that has lost money for decades and is still funded to the tune of over $1 billion per year. You are confusing that with private US rails.
US private rails own the railways and, while in theory they are required to give way to passenger rail, are so long and take so much time to cross that in practice passenger rail is forced to adhere to the time-schedule of private rail.
This is arguably illegal and only exists because the govt refuses to enforce the obvious interpretation of the agreement.
Meanwhile, the US DOT has historically always taken the approach of "the solution is more highways. What's the problem?", losing far more than $1B/year.
There are 3 million rail cars moved per day that haven't produced apocalyptic skies and chemical rain. You misrepresent the overall safety of private rail lines.
We're talking about passenger rail here, not cargo. Amtrak has a legally mandated monopoly, so you can only compete with them by building your own rails or using a different travel mode (e.g., bus or air).
If you find their service to be good and cheap, I can only assume you've never ridden a train in Europe.
