Not necessarily. If we take the late 19th century/early 20th century as our starting point, there could be a possibility, but only if the government is going against demand for more cars on the road and less trains on the rails.
Before we start, let's have another look at the OP:
Now, the HSR bit is reaching too far; the main reason why early HSR systems occurred where they did was because of problems with the original railway networks as they were constructed. For example, in the case of Japan and Italy (two countries that easily come to mind), geography was one big factor (hence why Italy took to Pendolinos and similar models like crazy even as far back as the Duce), and furthermore with Japan especially their existing narrow-gauge network was not conducive for express service.
North America (the US and Canada), by contrast, did not have that problem. The existing network, primarily for freight but even for passenger service, was pretty much a good network as it stood. The problems, especially out in the East Coast (south of Portland, ME), were based on different issues. Geography is one (in this case, the East Coast is heavily densely populated already, so there was a rapid loss of additional land to create a parallel express rail service). Another is the railway industry itself, which at the time was widely hated because of the stranglehold it held over the American economy (in Canada, this was less of an issue outside of the CPR, because the main point was to create a parallel network that avoided having to travel south into the States to go West and North). It didn't help that the railway companies intentionally overbuilt their networks beyond what we could consider dense and thought of profit over everything else - the classic case here being the NYNH&H, where JP Morgan basically treated it as the contemporary version of a hedge fund via monopolizing
all forms of transit in New England. Even when public transit is concerned, it was largely the preserve of property developers and real estate speculators.
In that case, if the Progressives pushed forward with publicly-funded elections, the "progressive" thing to do here would be to push those new-fangled horseless carriages, pushing passenger traffic into cars and buses and ripping up the tracks; alternately, the next best thing was the over-regulation of the ICC to make even freight as unprofitable as possible. In Canada, OTOH, that is a non-starter under Laurier and after; instead, there would be more of a push for balanced development of both the motor car
and the railway. Why? Because the federal government basically subsidized both rail and auto transit, both indirectly (in the case of the CPR, which started off as a P3P) and directly (both CN Rail, which was designed to absorb smaller non-viable railways in less-profitable areas, and the federal-provincial joint development known as the Trans-Canada Highway - not to mention regulations pre-Auto Pact that meant Canada developed distinctly different autos to American ones to address Canadians' lower purchasing power).
That's why my thinking is that there needs to be a crisis early enough that forces the governments on both sides of the border to take action, if the US wants to go towards a more Canadian route towards balanced development (and hence increase the viability of trains). The earlier the POD (within reason here, as the limit is 1900), the likelier the chance of state involvement. The Grand Trunk bankruptcy is a great POD if pushed pre-WW1 (hence an earlier formation of CN Rail), possibly creating a domino effect that affected the NYNH&H more than any other railway because of how vulnerable its business model was. That could lead to the creation of a nationalized railway network in the US, complemented by the states themselves with their own expansion of public transit (alongside further encouragement of motor vehicles). However, even with that, the focus here would be with state/regional networks as the primarily delivery point for inter-city service (considering states in the US are the size of whole average-sized countries). Long-distance service would have to take a back seat and atrophy for a while as passenger service gets rebuilt on a regional level. Specifically, to match the OP, the main regions the nationalized railway network in the US would focus on would be:
*New England (kept separate instead of a generic "Northeast" region because of the especially high attention paid to the collapse of the NYNH&H)
*Mid-Atlantic
*Southeast
*Midwest
*Texas (which slightly bends the "east of the 100th meridian west in the USA" thing in the OP, but Texas would probably be too important to leave to a generic Southeast region)
*Pacific Coast
That would basically be it WRT to focus (as far as the OP goes; the Western Region is going to have a hard time and, since it would be saddled with most of the long-distance service within the US, would have to gear its services more towards tourism and freight rather than having any possible utility as public transit, which is the route Alaska took with
its state-owned railway). On those levels, it's easier to target inter-city service and expanded public transit (including commuter and regional rail) at a regional level. In the case of New England specifically, combined with an earlier state takeover by MA of the BERy, it could be possible to have a regional coordination between the states and the federal government to have each service complementary with each other; similar arrangements could be made for the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern regions.
I should also add, though, that in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions specifically, the network was too dense to have any sort of viable service that some sort of a Beeching Axe would need to be contemplated, even if the focus was more towards modernization. Some of the cuts could be used to expand/salvage public transit or turning them into freight-only corridors.
Now, Canada is different insofar as CN Rail and the CPR already had extensive services in most of the regions identified in the OP (the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia); B.C. (the Pacific Coast in the OP here) had a limited but extensive service primarily run by the province, and Ontario supplemented CN Rail and CPR service in Northern Ontario with a specific multi-modal public transportation service for that region (Ontario Northland). In most of those cases, there really isn't much one can do (particularly as the Corridor was the big money-maker), but for the Maritimes (and specifically New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; PEI's small narrow-gauge network was probably going to go in any case) there could be better investment in the railway networks there. However, that should be tied with trying to find solutions to their economic decline, and hence stopping the tide of emigration, relative to the rest of Canada; in addition,
along with Quebec's Eastern Townships and South Shore, any possible solution is contingent on how developments south of the border go. As the CVR was a rarity due to it being a reasonably profitable non-Corridor part of the CN Rail network (though as one part of an already-dense system up and down the East Coast), resolving cross-border service here could help with developing and expanding public transit in both New England and in southern Quebec.
For the Corridor, all that would really need to be done would be upgrading the network (probably electrification as early as possible on the main trunk lines; branch lines are another story that will benefit as IOTL once diesel locos start getting used) towards faster speeds and better differentiation of passenger services, which means continuous renewal of rolling stock. B.C. and Ontario are good starts here with provincial service complementing CN Rail and the CPR; perhaps that could be more widespread (
looking at you, Saskatchewan)?
What does all of that mean, as far as publicly-financed elections go? Since the public demand here would be reduction of railway service of all types in favor of motor transport, at least in the US (not so much in Canada, as long as making transit-oriented development beyond the Golden Horseshoe becomes an industry standard), national and state/regional governments would pretty much have to go against public opinion even during the Progressive Era to make railways viable. That way, once the World Wars start and inevitably everyone has to limit the amount of fuel they consume, trains and public transit of all types would have a revival of popularity. Ultimately, that should lead to infrastructure renewal to keep up with demand and have it extend beyond the wars towards, say,
a more Swiss-like approach at the regional level (at least as far as the East Coast and the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor are concerned) as well as elements of the later MTR's rail + property strategy overall including for the statewide public transit networks in the US (not so much in Canada). The reason is that, if both passenger and freight railways are public services that doesn't appear as such (much like the MTR), it would have to respond to attracting demand by making it a reliable, efficient, and comfortable service. In that case, even the regions within the nationalized railway network are also, to some degree, competing with each other (so a state-owned variant of the later OTL
JR Group + MTR) to provide the best service possible for Americans. That strategy would have consequences far beyond the US, as far as rail transport in the Western Hemisphere is concerned, but again would be against the democratic majority that was anti-rail during the Progressive Era and after, until at least the 1960s and 1970s with the freeway riots.
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