'In other words, there is no daily train service to Houston, the country’s fourth biggest city'

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This is a pretty great article about why rail travel in the States sucks. These tidbits demonstrate the caliber of the problem:

• In 1980, railroads operated on 380,000 miles of tracks. [...] Track mileage today is 172,000 miles.
• Amtrak has run bare-bones for years, unable to purchase new passenger cars, cutting routes, and paying down debt. It owns only a small portion of track on its 22,000-mile network, so it cannot add trains and routes except by negotiating with the freight companies.
• Hubbard [a railroad employee] watched as a woman in a silky white pants suit and gold high heels unfolded a paper bag, placed it against her bottom and sat down on a dusty curb. He shook his head. “We are not a third-world country. We should not be treating passengers this way; yet it happens nearly every day,” he laments. “It’s like I’m still back in the 1970s. Nothing has changed.”
• Several Republican administrations tried but failed to kill Amtrak, calling it a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.
• The House bill would establish a $2.5 billion capital fund to provide 80-to-20-percent matching grants to states that want to improve train service between their major cities. [...] The Bush Administration has already expressed its opposition.

Really, the lack of foresight is absolutely staggering. It's as if someone at a mid-'80s White House meeting said 'Let's just make sure everyone has a car' and that became American transport policy in its entirety.