Urban Sky
Senior Member
I'm afraid you completely missed that I was talking about the infrastructure owners, which are still monopolists (though regulated ones) in the case of Network Rail (UK), RFF (France), Infrabel (Belgium), RFI (Italy) or others, as opposed to the state-owned passenger railroads which used to be monopolists in the respective countries (British Rail, SNCF, SNCB/MNSB or FS/Trenitalia). The EU is perfectly fine with Network Rail's monopoly on rail infrastructure ownership, while they are in conflict with Germany's model of the former monopolist railroad still owning the network (through DB Netz AG) or France, which has so far successfully shielded SNCF from any passenger rail competition worth mentioning.Urban writes:
[a state-controlled regulated monopoly (e.g. France or the UK)]
I'll detail more on the other points later, but this claim is a huge gaffe, as EU Directives dictated the break-up of state monopolies in transport years back. [...]
"The First Railway Directive 91/440/EC (with amendments, also called the "First Railway Package") is European Union Directive that sets out an EU law framework and requirements for railways in the EU to allow open access operations on railway lines by companies other than those that own the rail infrastructure. [...]
On a side note, I would like to ask you to use the "quote" function when quoting other members, as this makes it easier to distinguish between what you say yourself and what you answer to...
I'm decidedly more optimistic than you are, at least for the HFR studies yielding sufficient results to go ahead with private investors, but I'm probably also the member in this forum with the best access to the preliminary studies conducted so far...The 3.3M$ study will be well worth it even if the answer is "no"....which is probable in my estimation. It's not that it isn't a worthwhile endeavour, it's a great concept, but reality dictates much greater necessities elsewhere.
How many VIA studies have there been exactly which studied a dedicated infrastructure at conventional speeds between Montreal and Toronto with the explicit objective of considering private sources of funding/financing? I don't recall any and the compulsive studying and re-studying of a French-style HSR line over the entire Quebec-Windsor Corridor with mostly segregated infrastructure (see the studies conducted in 1991, 1995, 2010 and 2011) is the exact reason why we have had "so much pump, so few results" as you deplore.The "greater necessities elsewhere" is constantly applied to justify why we can't do anything well. My prediction is that after 10 years we have nothing to show for Trudeau's tax and spending spree except a couple of stubways, some GO electrification, and yet another VIA study that tells us what we already know. So much pomp, so few results.
This is exactly what VIA Rail aims at with pitching its HFR proposal to private-sector investors, who would build (and potentially maintain) the dedicated infrastructure and rent it out to VIA Rail. However, the revenue risk would remain with VIA and ensure that the operational profits are reinvested into the network, while the investors would presumably demand a government guarantee to protect their investment...I'd love to hear proposals from private companies and see government get out of the way, because we're not seeing much under the current ownership and regulatory model. Multiple privately owned subway lines were built in NYC under a city authority. I know the argument will always be made that the private sector will build the profitable lines and leave the unprofitable ones to government, but we're a more urban country now, and surely the are ways of requiring private companies to do their share, just like we require condo developers to build privately owned parks for the public.
I agree that the Conservatives did not really like VIA, but the self-defeating effect of the 2012 cuts seems to have introduced a change in attitude in which VIA was given more entrepreneurial space to find themselves a strategy of how to reduce its deficit while increasing its utility to the Canadian taxpayer. It was the subsequent change in Management which only made the HFR proposal possible...We certainly wouldn't have gotten that from the Conservatives, Euphoria, quite the opposite. The Cons tried their best to kill VIA. Let's not mix up what can be achieved with a couple of Billion though, by comparing massively dissimilar size of projects. For urban areas, that money can make a radical difference, albeit it's still hazy as to what will go where.