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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
Or at least the stretches of railway that are of public interest such as in/around metro areas or major routes between them. I agree with esquire in that we need an overall capacity increase if we're to accommodate both passenger and freight in an efficient manner and that having both is in the public interest even if one is technically private. If there case where private business is simply being obstinate and not making any attempt to accommodate public use because they have no business incentive to do it, then creating policy that compels them is warranted. But I suspect that cases such as the Corridor simply require investment in greater infrastructure quality/capacity. I mean, how much have the railroads really been upgraded over the decades in conjunction with the country's growth in population and economy?
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I suspect that if you approached CN or CP, they would probably tell you that they own their tracks and they need them to operate their business, i.e. freight trains. They'd probably also be happy to accept government funding to build parallel tracks and operate passenger trains.
Which brings me to my point: this is really about governments breaking down and paying for additional capacity. CN and CP can accomplish the task of taking government money to lay down rails and run trains just fine on their own, you don't need to nationalize them. And without that additional capacity it's meaningless... what's the point of taking X number of cars off the road on the Toronto-Ottawa route when you just replace them with the same number of trucks hauling freight?