Why is passenger rail service so useless for much of the US?

[RangerPooh]

Passenger rail used to be considerably more important at one time in the United States. Freight railroads were given a lot of powers including that of eminent domain to acquire land and the ability to operate a private police force with the same powers as a government police force. And part of the bargain was that they had an obligation to provide passenger rail service.

Even if it didn't make them money, passenger rail service used to be a prestige operation for the major railroads. They spent a lot of money and wanted passengers. A lot of our grand national park lodges were built by the major railroads as a way to encourage travel on their rails. Union Pacific had their Utah Parks Company that built lodges all over, including Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and the Grand Canyon North Rim.

Amtrak wasn't actually expected to survive, but it was a way for participating railroads to get out of their obligation to provide passenger rail service.

Amtrak stops in Glacier NP too.

 

[RangerPooh]

I’ve only taken Amtrak once, and it was when we were moving from WA to MI. My husband drove our car and belongings out a few weeks before us to get settled. It was vastly cheaper for me to get two coach seats for me and two toddlers than it was to fly. The downside, a 40+hour train ride from Spokane WA to Chicago. The food car ran out of food 1/2 way into the trip. changing diapers in a train restroom sucked. Departure time was like 2:49am, rough time for toddlers and me. If we could have afforded it we’d have gotten a small private cabin.

But I did get to pass through Glacier NP, saw antelope in the wild in the Dakotas, and passed through Mancato WI (Little House on the Prairie).

 

[bcla]

Amtrak stops in Glacier NP too.

I was thinking of how the railways built grand hotels in national parks to attract passengers. However, Many Glacier Hotel and Glacier Park Lodge were built by the Great Northern Railway. The latter isn't actually in the park though.

https://www.nps.gov/places/manyglacierhotel.htm​

Many Glacier was built by the Great Northern Railway as the showplace of their network of chalets and hotels. A hardy crew of craftsmen overcame the difficulties of building what was then Montana's largest hotel while withstanding winter temperatures below zero degrees in order to have the hotel completed for a July 4, 1915 opening. Most of the timber for the hotel was logged from nearby and milled at a sawmill on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake. In the 1960s through 1980s, the hotel was known for its employee entertainment.​