Quebec-Windsor Corridor

[micheal_can]

The privatization of Great Britain’s rail infrastructure (through an insane jigsaw of actors, overseen by incompetent Railtrack) was certainly a disaster, but I’m much less sure for the train operating company side, which mostly suffered from their overexposure to revenue risks and infrastructure underinvestments. There certainly are different ways to achieve privatization and I believe the Continental European way of tendering of regional services through public service obligations is rather successful, with unit unit costs decreasing while train volume (and ridership) increases…

Could that model be used here in such a way that it would provide the freight operators the slots they need as well as being able to have a robust passenger rail network?

 

[dowlingm]

I do wonder if one thing the UK has that might be helpful in thre North American market is rolling stock leasing. It’s difficult, of course, with the variety of train control and platform heights etc., but it seems to me that liquidity to react to unexpected issues is far too tight, whether it be demand surges, a significant train crash like the Talgo Series 6, or a natural event like that flooding that took out a lot of northeast corridor stock a few years back. By contrast, an airline in a bind has many options to choose from, some of which ordered straight from the production line by the lessors.