We can argue the micro implications of ownership etc. but ultimately, though not a lawyer, I do not see any reason why, if 20+ countries of the European Union could come up with a framework to separate infrastructure management and operations, and progressively widen the scope of open access arrangements, that similar arrangements could not be mandated for Canada.
The contrast between railroad infrastructure investments in Europe vs. North America is that if you want infrastructure investment to reflect the needs of the public rather than private interests, then the industry will start to expect that these funds come predominantly from public rather than private investors...
We won't even put VIA on a statutory footing still less introduce a weaksauce arrangement like PRIIA. Our principal freight operators are American companies in all but name and the provinces have little interest - both QC and ON stood by and watched while both options to route Ottawa area freight direct to the west were dismantled rather than be purchased into public hands, and the Sault area railways seem to be perpetually stuck in a state of new collapse as the feds dribble in a little money to stave off complete closure in lieu of a revitalization strategy.
Neither of the two major parties in Ontario, which has the financial wherewithal, not to mention two provincially owned rail concerns, to seize the initiative as certain States in the US like Michigan, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine have done, believe enough in regional rail to invest in it and in ensuring fullest use of existing and dismantled rail alignments.
Despite all deregulations, the freight rail infrastructure is still regulated to the point where the freight railroads have to publicly announce their intend to discontinue parts of their network and to allow any interested railroad - private or public - to buy it. Indeed, the non-interest of the three governments concerned (Ottawa, Ontario, Quebec) to acquire and thus preserve any continuous rail alignment west of Ottawa speaks volume about how little of a political priority rail infrastructure is...
If we want better passenger rail, we need to bite the bullet and build a dedicated corridor for that, where it make sense. Taking corridors away from CN or CP for passenger rail is an exercise in robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Exactly, you can't expect freight railroads to take a substantial share of the financial burden of providing performant passenger rail infrastructure when they hardly benefit their own (freight) operations!
I would take substantial issue with the linked article and its needlessly clickbaity headline, not least now that the observations about Asia-Europe demand have shifted substantially due to coronavirus impacts on air freight capacity, or that Europe necessarily must adopt the hostile American practice of not merely double stacking trains, making grade separation above lines more challenging, but also the ultra long trains which sever localities in half for tens of minutes at a time..
Despite the slightly exaggerated headline, the article is absolutely spot-on in almost every word - and that's me saying this as a fiercely patriotic European ("my country is Europe") who uses the EU-flag as a profile picture on Facebook! - as freight rail in Europe is almost as neglected as intercity passenger rail is in North America. Granted, the modal share of passenger rail (if we combine "Railway" and "Tram + metro") in the EU is almost 13 times that of the US (8.5% vs. 0.7% by passenger-km), but Europeans still drive 8.5 times the distance they cover by rail (market share of the "Passenger car" is 72.2% vs. 81.4% in the US). Conversely, the market share for rail freight in the United States is almost three times higher than in the EU (31.8% vs. 11.3%, by ton-km) and might actually surpass the road as the dominant mode with the right sets of incentives (road freight market share 40.6% in the US vs. 50.2% in the EU):
Source:
Transport in Figures - Statistical Pocketbook 2019
Nevertheless, two performant freight rail corridors have been built in Europe - one is the Kiruna-Narvik rail corridor mentioned in aforementioned article which has been upgraded to support axle loads similar to those in North America:
That said, Blaze pointed out to how commercial necessity has helped transform a Scandinavian railway line running within Norwegian and Swedish borders to carry around 30 metric tonnes on each axle load, unlike the regular 20 to 23 metric tonnes that is carried in the other parts of Europe.
[...]
“Increasing the axle loads meant an increase of loads per car by 20%. Though it had to increase the track maintenance budget by roughly 20%, the railway had lower crew costs, lower engine costs and lower equipment costs because it was getting much better utilization of the equipment. This led to a 28-30% net increase in savings for the movement of the iron ore,” said Blaze.
The more interestingly, however, is the
Betuweroute, a dedicated freight railroad (linking Europe’s largest port in Rotterdam with the German border) built with double-tracks, completely grade-separated and with a vertical clearance to allow double-stacking of containers:
Unfortunately, the second example highlights the misery of freight rail in Europe, as the line's potential is all but lost at the German border, beyond which freight trains are subject to the same rail capacity shortages, limited vertical clearances, technological borders (legacy electricity and train control systems rather than unified standards) and low-priority treatment which suppresses freight railroading across the continent. The closing paragraphs of the article
@roger1818 posted describe the same under-investment and political disinterest in providing a performant freight rail infrastructure in Europe, which plagues the passenger rail mode on this side of the Ocean:
Going by this instance, it can be gathered that what was done in Scandinavia can be replicated by the German Deutsche Bahn or Swiss Rail. Europe failing to take an interest in bolstering its freight railway system eventually boils down to the lack of incentive. Respective countries run their share of Europe’s railway network and have not allowed the rail sector to be privatized like in North America.
In essence, it is about time Europe addresses the elephant in the room. For the EU, the equation is simple – increase capital expenditures on its aging railway system and look to take volume from a maritime market that looks particularly vulnerable today.
The more pertinent issue for this thread is the notion that, as you assert passenger rail needs a dedicated corridor as a condition of improved service, with the obvious implication that passenger rail must pay all of the absurdly inflated cost of modern construction while rail freight merely gets to keep and maintain what it owns, having been previously been relieved of the requirement to provide said service and only having to tolerate a public agency doing so.
Open access assumes there is network capacity. There isn't. With a bunch of investment that will be needed over the next 30 years for freight capacity, a bunch of network capacity that isn't needed for freight will be created. And the rail roads won't be able to pay for it by themselves. That is the time to remake the arrangement - securing room for intercity rail in exchange for massive subsidy where the railways only pay for the extra capacity they use and in exchange must provide access to others on the same cost basis to their current network. It is the only way that will be compliant with our trade agreements, good for the country, and good for VIA. Now we just need to figure out how to get from today to there.
The issue is not capacity (at least not on double-tracked rail corridors like the Kingston Sub): You could easily double the number of freight
and of passenger trains operating if they operated at a comparable average speed. Whereas some VIA services do run at average speeds comparable with freight trains (54.7 mph in the case of the morning commuter train #651), you do need to reach significantly higher average speeds if you want to be competitive against the car, bus and the plane and that's why intercity rail is the type of rail traffic which is the by far most likely to be constrained by the speed limits imposed by the horizontal alignment (curves) - and that's why a dedicated infrastructure is usually built for that rail traffic type, whereas regional rail and freight rail may co-exist quite well (thanks to their much more similar average speeds).