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Remind me again who owns the rail infrastructure networks in Europe? They are all either government-affiliated entities or dedicated infrastructure companies without any own train operations, as virtually all large networks were nationalized and consolidated in the 1920s. You can’t just take EU Directive 2007/58/EC and adapt it into Canadian law…
We’ve discussed this countless times on the VIA Rail thread: CN and CP have a market capitalization of $100 billion each, thus some 5% of GDP each. It will be extremely costly to motivate or coerce them into ceeding control over their vital key assets, as the government would find itself in constant litigation where you try to establish what exactly constitutes “reasonable use” and “fair compensation”, while investors will leave Canada in droves (you may want to look at what happened when China’s government needlessly went at war against its domestic video game or private tutoring industries recently)…
Calgary doesn't have a station anymore, neither does Edmonton. Considering that the Canadian doesn't even serve Calgary there would be no point in investing in a Calgary station.
Got it! But it may need some type of facility if they get a train to the mountains or a commuter train to Airdrie.
How exactly is Calgary relevant to anything which has been discussed in this thread lately?
I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of 'open access rail', but different systems of governance and different laws can mean it is no guarantee that whatever they have done in Europe could be replicated over here. The one thing that wasn't clear in the link was whether any of the lines involved carry any - or any significant amount of freight. The amount of freight moved by rail in Europe pales in comparison to us. If access impairs freight income, it impairs profitability.
The concept is called 'constructive expropriation' or 'disguised expropriation', and the SCOC has ruled on it, but not in this direct context. Only the State (federal, provincial or municipal government0 can expropriate for a public work. If it was enabling legislation impacting private corporations I think it would subject to massive litigation. VIA rail (or any other Crown corporation created by the government) is not a private corporation; it is a child of the State.
HEP cars (just like LRC cars) are already permanently withdrawn one-by-one on an almost monthly basis and VIA already doesn’t have the fleet to reintroduce trains 3/4 (the third summer-only EDMO-VCVR frequency) or to add additional peak Sleeper capacity on the Ocean and Churchill trains. At the same time, TC seems determined to not tolerate HEPs in operation past 2035 (and I’m not sure how many cars would even last that long), meaning that the current trajectory (the “Do-nothing” or “Business-As-Usual” scenario) is that VIA’s non-Corridor services will steadily fade out and completely disappear over the next 12 years:
No court can stop investors from fleeing the industry (and the country) when you start abruptly changing the rules and micromanaging the two largest corporations in this country, which represent one-tenth of the Economy (measured as market capitalization as % of nominal GDP).
Unless you want to cap overall profits of CN and CPKC, you will get tangled endlessly in discussions over what maintenance (and opportunity) costs are directly associated with operating passenger trains and which ones aren’t - all of which need to be settled somehow, whether by courts or arbitrators. The governments’ experiences which led to the creation of VIA in 1976-78 was that when you make a “cost-plus” (or “cost-minus”) reimbursement, then suddenly almost every single operating expense magically becomes directly related with passenger operations…
I hope you're not underestimating the willingness if a vindictive new government to cancel good projects. It's happened before.
I wouldn't link service to Peterborough with the midtown corridor. There are multiple options for getting a train from the Havelock sub to Union.
You're both right (and, yes, Paul, I do forget the provisions of the CTA), but using legislation to regulate the rate of compensation for a product or service is different than determining the profitability of a company or its ability to retain investors, and I'm not sure that was envisioned in the various sections of the CTA. It's one thing to determine that imposing or allowing passenger service X should be compensated on, say, a per axle basis for wear and tear, maintenance, HR, etc., but how does the Agency or an arbitrator determine that imposed service X makes the rail company Y% less profitable?I seem to say this a lot....but..... the whole debate around what the government can do and what rights the railways have as private enterprises gets a whole lot simpler if one refers to the Canada Transportation Act.
The most relevant sections to this discussion are -
Section 36 - CTA authority to impose mediation and Arbitration
Section 112 - Commercially fair and reasonable
Section 113 - Levels of service
Section 138 - Running rights and joint trackage
Section 145.1 - Offer to governments before discontinuance
Section 152.1 - Public Passenger Service Providers Dispute Resolution
Section 157.1 - Determination of costs
The point being - the CTA does give the government (via application to the CTA) much of the power that posters are wishing it had.... and the CTA does already outline the general framework for determining compensation to the railways when such powers are exercised. So, the law is not as constitutionally murky - or as toothless - as one might think.
Open access of a European vein would likely mean scrapping the CTA in entirety, and writing a whole new regime. definitely a hammer to kill a big bug proposition. Maybe that would be desirable, but the delay before anyone could get on with a passenger rail project would be considerable.
The present framework may not expedite solving some of the issues that stand in the way of a better passenger infrastructure, but the solution may be some tinkering and not a more substantial legal rewrite.
- Paul
