>I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.
When something becomes a cultural priority, economic sectors shift to accommodate it. We are really good at trucking, for example. We have loads of highways. We also have excellent freight rail.
The reason that the passenger rail sector in the US sucks is because it is small at a national scale and so it doesn't benefit from access to the national market. If you model NYC as a small country building its own rail network in a high-cost area surrounded by countries with no transit and expensive labor, suddenly it makes sense. Passenger rail isn't a priority in the curriculum at most universities. People who might learn how to build subways instead learn to build highways. Companies that might specialize in subways specialize in airports. To use a coding analogy, building passenger rail does not follow the happy path for American construction organizations, be they unions or firms.
(In Latin America, the problem starts earlier: primary and secondary school math scores in LA trail the income quantile for, IIRC, all LA countries)
This is a situation that can be changed, but it won't happen in one place or at one time. Alternatively, the country could reduce taxes on foreign contractors building transit infrastructure and recruit more foreign investment, although that would certainly leave a bitter taste if it hurt the car industry.