I’m going with “size doesn’t matter” here; it’s all politics. On the one hand we have a political requirement that all these long distance routes be kept running, even if they’ll never be viable, never be funded adequately. But on the other hand most of the population is in urban/suburban areas that could be effectively served by good rail service. We don’t have the political will power to create good rail service where it’s most effective, most needed, but we do waste money on bad rail service where it will never be effective
Railroads were not an option as they were expensive and land intensive
I’m not buying this, since the tracks and right of way used to exist. Yes it’s really expensive to acquire now, and that’s going to happen since centers of population change but you can’t use this as an historical reason, because historically we had a lot more train service.