Railway electrification in the US is a political problem. US freight rail has tiny margins and relies on quantity for profits. Freight rail regularly delays maintenance and upgrades until unavoidable for cost reasons. The US gov't is loathe to make American rail less competitive and force it to electrify, so they continue running polluting trains.
Us freight does not have tiny margin, they pay a large dividends and have spent 100s of millions in stock by back.
> Freight rail regularly delays maintenance and upgrades until unavoidable for cost reasons.
They are gradually running down the infrastructure built 100 years ago into the ground and maintain at the bare minimum while making large profits.
> The US gov't is loathe to make American rail less competitive and force it to electrify, so they continue running polluting trains.
Electrification would make it even more profitable then it already is.
Pretty much every single study done on electrification shows that it pays for itself in a pretty reasonable amount of time. Given that this is something that would still be useful 100 years from now, the US government forcing all first class to invest in this would be of huge benefits both to them and to the US as a whole.
