I've been thinking about this lately and I don't think it's a bad thing. Redeveloping old rail corridors is a good way to maximize value of land usage and improve the wellbeing of communities. I don't think anyone would look at downtown Toronto today and say they want the rail yards back.
When it comes down to it, rail exists to support high volume transport corridors between the largest cities. Anything less than that and the high fixed costs just make it a brainless proposition. Local and branch line traffic are much better handled by trucks and busses. In the end it was reality that killed the OBRY. Everyone vilifies Sandy Brown, but perhaps he was the one who actually asked the right questions. The industries in town said they would be in bad shape or have to move without the railway, but they are all still there and some have even expanded operations. In reality, they only wanted a handout. The best and most economical practice in rail freight is transloading and containers.
This tweet is particularly relevant to this discussion:
If you want to run a Stadler FLIRT on a rural branch line, first ask why a bus wouldn't suffice. This type of service which was envisioned on the OBRY, BCRY, Vancouver Island, and Cambridge to Guelph is not a good value use of money and would provide objectively worse service on travel times and frequency in most cases. The county of Simcoe were rather foolish in stating in their transport master plan that they would preserve the BCRY corridor for such a dream that will never come, rather than taking Brampton's approach of actually getting the most value out of the corridor they paid for.
www.brampton.ca
