Flying under the radar the past year has been SD's effort to sell of all its state trackage. During the 80s, SD bought up ~900 mi of track to preserve svc during a period of rail retrenchment; 400 remains state-owned today, but that seems to be going to 0 https://www.keloland.com/news/capitol-news-bureau/di-plans-to-buy-a-s-d-owned-rail-line-and-watco-companies-seeks-to-buy-another/

You'd never know it listening to the discourse around passenger rail in this country, but there's actually a _lot_ of publicly owned rail mileage--especially in the Midwest and West. Problem is that most of that trackage is branchlines kept active for rural development purposes.

My favorite example is Washington State, which not only owns tons of track in Eastern Washington, but also owns a fleet of hopper cars to ensure growers hauling grain from the Palouse to Snake River ports or Portland can do so w/o worrying abt car availability.

One thing you'll notice if you read the strategic plans for these rural rail line purchase and (sometimes) subsidy programs is that they are very clearly posed in part as answers to increasing road damage from greater VMT related to the centralization of grain supply chains.

These programs are thus, in some regards, ways for governments to save themselves money! We need more policy informed by this view of freight system dynamics and cost structures; trucks cause most road damage & reducing their volumes is an end with real direct and social returns!

If you wanna read some more about grain transportation trends: https://twitter.com/A320Lga/status/1262515244812902400?s=20