[Mvhsz]

Not from the PNW, but it sounds like amtrak rents track from a freight line to run this route. So it works in the sense that they got something resembling inter-city rail service for a tiny fraction of the capital costs up front.

Even so, I'm guessing that there are options other than $50B of high speed track to improve the route. Maybe there's a few segments of track where a large fraction of the delays happen, and 30 miles of amtrak-owned track would really improve on-timliness. Just getting it from +hours to +minutes might draw some new users.