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Does that include the cost of buying the tracks between Kitchener and London? They also need to something about the slow order between Georgetown and Acton. The part from Guelph to Kitchener is a hug improvement.
Notwithstanding the obvious barriers to this, I don't believe that (in an extreme case), there's anything that could stop a forced sale of a line through act of parliament. It's just that the "extreme" solutions are not politically viable. This is something we should be careful about with "can't". There just isn't the right political or economic climate to force the rail transport corporations to cooperate for fear of actual consequences, even milder ones like the financial penalties imposed for poor host railway performance.
Any decline in their own productivity as a result of giving passenger rail priority would hurt their bottom line which would have an impact on their stock value. Likely not a good thing. But in the US they have made some progress of with this but lack cooperation from CN.
I doubt that there is another country on this planet where the total market capitalization of its main freight railroads (C$185 billion) reaches anything close to 8% of its GDP…
The largest barrier to this is the economic impact of adding thousands of trucks a day to the 401 alone (not to mention all of the other impacted highways) as a result of neutering our rail freight transportation system.
My point was that CN and CP are massive chunks of the Canadian Economy (not just of its transportation industry). CN’s market capitalization at C$99 billion is at par with that of the entire Volkswagen Group (€77 billion, i.e. some C$103 billion) and that is still the second-largest car manufacturer by units sold which is a massive player in German politics (even though Germany’s GDP is more than twice as large as Canada’s).
With size comes political clout, and for that it’s not too important how much of their operations are actually at home (in fact, the less of it is at home, the more credibly you can threaten to move future investments - or even your HQ - abroad)…
In terms of something like the Canadian, for a train that runs three days a week CN should be able to accomodate it without much impact on their operations. The question is why should they?
I assume you meant Jasper (not: Banff), but, in any case, the federal government currently gets no less than what it pays for: which is lousy service to its own trains in exchange for virtually zero public investment into heavy rail infrastructure. If it wants better service, it ought to sit down with CN and fund the cost increment of the necessary investments associated with running passenger trains more frequently/fast/reliablly…
Agreed. One also has to ask, with only 3 trains a week, how much is the government willing to spend to implement those upgrades and would that money be better spent somewhere else?
What if that investment could lead to the train running 7x per week in each direction?
This question seems especially pertinent on the Ocean, where passenger revenues barely exceed $10 million, even in a good year (like 2018, see table further below)…
As it happens (or as railfans keep bringing up the same topics), I’ve compared last week on a different forum the variable costs and revenues of the Ocean and Canadian in 1988 (when both still operated daily) and in 2018 (when both operated only 3 times per week, or in the case of the Canadian during winter even: only twice per week):
So if i understand this right the train running more often had better revenues and cost recovery? So it would actually make sense for it to run more often, which allows more people to take it. Also taking into consideration that Greyhound is now gone, and air travel is a mess, people may be more option to other options?This question seem especially pertinent on the Ocean, where passenger revenues barely exceed $10 million, even in a good year (like 2018, see table further below)…
As it happens (or as railfans keep bringing up the same topics), I’ve compared last week on a different forum the variable costs and revenues of the Ocean and Canadian in 1988 (when both still operated daily) and in 2018 (when both operated only 3 times per week, or in the case of the Canadian during winter even: only twice per week):
Cross-post from: SkyscraperPage
Compiled from: Office of the Prime Minister (1989, pp. 67+70 in the PDF), VIA Rail's Corporate Plan 2019-2023 (p.21) and VIA Rail's Annual Report 2018 (p.9)
