An interesting discussion and fraught with "complications". Determining the cost to run a passenger train on a freight railroad and then try to apply that on a nationwide scale is difficult to say the least. One rail route may be able to accommodate Amtrak easily with little additional cost - other routes could be very expensive, particularly on high traffic routes with strained capacity.
It does seem somewhat disingenuous to claim that the recent Amtrak wreck wouldn't have happened if the passenger train wasn't there........ what about the next train to come along? A misaligned switch is a misaligned switch. A suspended signal system is a suspended signal system. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not familiar with the strength of the Amtrak track use agreements but it seems like a stretch to think that attorneys for victims of this accident would not be able assign some level of liability on CSX since it seems pretty clear it was solely CSX's fault. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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