Anyone who's familiar with the NYC->BOS Acela route will tell you that both the tracks and artificial speed limitations when going through Westchester suck. When you ride on the train, you can be productive the whole time.
If you're from the rest of the world and aren't familiar, maybe this would be a helpful article?
Today, all long-route passenger service is handled by Amtrak, a for-profit corporation which is both a monopoly and subsidized by the Federal government. The only electrified Amtrak rails are in the northeast, running from Washington DC past NYC to New Haven, Connecticut, and then a different electrification scheme from New Haven to Boston, plus a route across half of Pennsylvania. Everywhere else across the country, long-haul rail is strictly diesel.
The person you quoted is talking about the portion of the NYC - Boston route just north of NYC, going through a fairly expensive area called Westchester. It is noted for high incomes and high property taxes. The train tracks are not in good repair and there are too many at-grade road crossings. The result is that Amtrak is chronically late.
And that is literally like almost nobody. I bet less then 1% of anyone living in NYC or Boston metropolitan area have ever ridden on Amtrak, let alone the Acela.
- https://media.amtrak.com/2017/11/amtrak-sets-ridership-reven...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_Amtrak_station...
- https://www.railpassengers.org/all-aboard/tools-info/ridersh...
Divided by about 200 workdays a year and you end up with about 17,000. Even tripling that as you adjust for things and you probably have less than 25,000 semi-regular riders or better.
Shinjuku station in Tokyo (the world's busiest train station by passenger count) serves 3.64 million passengers per day.