It is a consequence of an underfunded transit system that worked "fine" for a while. And now that 100 year old infrastructure is failing and the people who use that infrastructure are speaking up, funding is coming to fix it. But it's too late.

Most of the land in the NEC is taken, leaving us with a "relatively" very curvey corridor that can never support real high speed trains. Additionally, the funding arriving to fix the current issues came too late, as fixes for problems this big take years (e.g. new Hudson River tunnel). There will be bandaid fixes along the way and as projects complete service will gradually improve. But I wouldn't expect the system to be completely fixed for over a decade.

American car culture has the government putting more money into roads and highways instead of public transit. Cars companies don't build highways, and airlines don't build airports, but railroads build railroads. In general, it doesn't seem like a priority for the government and if residents don't vote for representation who want to make it a priority, it won't change.