The explanation for why US passenger rail is so slow, as I've read in other threads, is that the lines are at capacity with freight and it often has precedence. The distances traveled are often enormous, and the amounts so large given how hard it is to move things by ocean from the west coast to the east, that it is probably hard to do this. This has been bemoaned by passenger rail as misplaced priorities, but in terms of the environment this is probably optimal since train is many orders of magnitude more efficient than trucks, especially with the length of freight trains in US (another advantage US freight efficiency has over European, and also blamed for slower passenger lines in the US).

Europe has far more passenger rail, but seems to pay for it with less efficient freight rail and a lot more trucks.

> The explanation for why US passenger rail is so slow, as I've read in other threads, is that the lines are at capacity with freight and it often has precedence.

Almost all the rail roads (tracks) are owned by freight companies that give priority to their own direct customers. It's not a factor of capacity. AMTRAK operates over 21K miles of service and owns 623 miles of track.

Sometimes passenger traffic can negotiate a better deal. In the bay area, the commuter service CALTRAIN runs on S&P freight tracks too, but has negotiated with S&P to have freight run when no scheduled passenger service will run. But there is very little freight on that line -- not even a weekly run. So it was hardly a sacrifice for S&P to make that promise. In fact I would have guessed it was simply luck for CALTRAIN if I hadn't once seen mention of such a deal in the local paper.

BTW it's not worth running rail freight coast to coast as a boat is cheaper and the US has ports on east, south, and west coasts, and can use a canal through Panama.

"American railroads move more than 5,000 ton-miles of freight per person per year. That’s compared to 500 ton-miles per person in Europe and less than 170 ton-miles per person in Japan." (just a neat snippet on just how important freight rail is to the US - obviously due to the enormous size of the US, but plays into your comment on amount of track too. A lot of it is just vast distances connecting empty stuff. Still not convenient for running multiple services)

As for shipping, yeah, you can definitely take the canal, but it will still take longer to ship from china to east coast than to unload in los angeles and ship it across the country. And ofc requires a freighter small enough to navigate the canal. A lot of freight does get unloaded on the west coast then shipped across the country. At that point while the ship would be more efficient energy-wise, there just isn't the capacity and speeds needed, so the comparison is still truck versus train.