St. Louis to Chicago is a very, very flat 260 miles. To buy an Amtrak ticket it’s $36-43 and takes 5h.

I’m traveling to Italy soon and a ticket from Genoa to Rome is €35, about the same distance between a sea front and a mountain range, and takes a whole hour less travel time.

Amtrak is in desperate need of public funding and freight rail needs to be prosecuted for blatantly ignoring laws that give passenger trains the right of way on rails.