The UK’s privitizaton model was crap because it mandated service and only allowed operators to compete on price paid to the UK government, ensuring that all operators were lowest bid and trying to spend the least money on running trains.

Divorcing running trains from maintaining track seems to work better on price since railroads owners are more incentivized to have more trains run on their tracks to gain revenue. However, this system seems to only be tested on rail systems with competent rail operators, which DB is not.

I do think that divorcing owning the tracks and owning the trains is something that should be forced on American rail companies.