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I wish you were right, but passenger service consumes a tremendous amount of rail line capacity. Imagine a 2 lane road with a speed limit of 45 mph, but an emergency vehicle has to make a long run on that road at 60 mph, and it must not stop or slow down. Railroad dispatchers have to clear the path well ahead of Amtrak just to make it fit. Freight crews hit their 12 hr max waiting for Amtrak to pass, and their trains "die" on the line of road. In addition, track engineering for passenger and freight service is very different, and track that accommodates both is a compromise that is good for neither.
My career has been railroad sales and industrial development, and Amtrak has as very real and significant negative effect on freight business. It deteriorates freight service, sending freight to the highway, and limits capacity for new business.
The healthy passenger era to which you refer was before cheap airfare and our interstate highway system. If you chose to research it, find a passenger rail rate from the 50's, adjust it for inflation, and compare it to the speed, cost, and convenience of today's highway or air options. It won't measure up, and that's why passenger rail has lost it's advantage. Amtrak's operatiing cost (not including lost freight cost to railroads) is $3.74 billion for 29 mm passengers. $130 per passenger buys a very nice bus with plenty of room, probably even a sleeping compartment. Heck, if I pool a few friends, I can ride in a limousine for less, and I'll be reducing my carbon footprint.
I work for a major railroad, and I love trains. The fuel efficiency of a freight train is about 1 gallon of diesel to move 1 ton of freight 500 miles, which is over 3 times the fuel efficiency of trucks. However..., the fuel advantage (and the overall competitive advantage) starts to drop with lighter products that have a lower "load factor" (number of truckloads that a railcar can carry. Heavy bulk products load 4.5 truckloads per railcar. String together 130 cars, and you have a train carrying 585 truckloads.
In constrast, passenger rail is a different story. A passenger railcar has just a few more seats than a bus, and passenger volume isn't usually sufficient to fill more than 8 railcars; so a passenger train carries only about 9 busloads. Greyhound averages 170 passenger miles per gallon, while Amtrak only gets about 55 passenger miles per gallon. This doesn't even consider the wasted fuel by freight trains idling on sidings to clear the way for Amtrak.
There is a misperception that the US rail network has excess capacity, but most main lines are maxed out. Passenger rail only makes this worse, with no net economic or ecological benefit. Because of passenger trains' higher speeds and priority status, they consume many times the main line capacity of a freight train, all for 9 busloads of people???? Amtrak restricts and delays freight shipments, forcing freight onto the highways.
Please, educate your fellow citizens and politicians. If mass transit is the goal, let's focus on a new, comfortable, economical, and efficient inter-city bus system so we can keep the freight where it belongs.
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