Americans do not care about freight rail and they do absolutely despise it. You can go ask Americans (hint: I live here).
There are cultural issues here as well as economic ones. You're not viewed as doing something important or something innovative, and I'm sure that can discourage you from doing it right. And if you do it right - who cares? The expectation is to do it wrong.
> Americans do not care about freight rail and they do absolutely despise it.
Yeah, but those Americans are idiots (as so many of them seem to be). Idiots not caring about or despising it doesn't change the factual matter of whether it is infrastructure vital to their lives or not.
There are cultural issues here as well as economic ones. You're not viewed as doing something important or something innovative, and I'm sure that can discourage you from doing it right. And if you do it right - who cares? The expectation is to do it wrong.