I read the article and was dismayed by the suggestion of spending $30M to "start testing creative solutions".
To me thats bureaucrat speak for lets give consultants a bunch of money to consult and not solve anything.
So instead, let's look at fixing the problem instead of studying it to death.
We already have Starlink providing service worldwide, so let's take that 30M and use it!
Since each Startlink business antenna can support 200 users and average users per railcar is 32, there is certainly enough room (28.5M riders / 2412 railcars / 365 days)
Instead of blowing 30M on "studying" the problem, you could try to solve it and have 1 months of service paid for.
2142 railcars * $2,500 for Flat High Performance Starlink Antennas * 2 for redundancy = $25M
Monthly service costs: Unlimited Mobile Global Data Inland $5,000 ($5,000 per unit * 2412 * 2) = $24M
Ongoing monthly cost $24M
I bet Elon would give a group discount.
That's 10 bucks per rider. probably 3 bucks if you charged for the service in major segments like 3 bucks from CHI to DEN, 3 bucks from DEN to SF.
Oh wait since Amtrak has to go to congress to fund the "study", they will probably have to go to congress to fund the roll out and implementation, so no rider charges.
And let's face it, this probably will not be needed on the NE corridor, so the monthly data costs would be much less I believe.
I know- this all makes too much sense.
Is it perfect? No
Will it work everywhere all of the time? No, even cell phones don't.
Is it better to spend 30M Doing something to solve the the problem instead of looking at the problem? IMHO Yes.
Is bad WIFI better than no WIFI? Yes, again IMHO.
Is it something that can be built upon and improved over time? Yes
Can that be said about spending the money "testing creative solutions", Yes I'm sure at the end the suggestion would be to spend more $$$ to study the problem some more.
OK end of rant