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Originally Posted by acottawa
The feds regulate the railways, they can set whatever track prioritization rules they want.
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In theory yes. In practice, the railways are the economic lifeline of many industries and putting obstacles in the way of the movement of freight will hurt more than just the railways.
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The real obstacle is the amount of rail freight in Canada is so large. Canada carries more tonne km of freight than the entire EU.
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That is the thing that is often overlooked by many rail enthusiasts. The last thing we want is to switch rail freight to trucks.
According to
this report, CN moved 2.7 million metric tonnes of grain in the month of June. If you consider in the US (I assume the regulation in Canada are similar but haven't confirmed) regulations limit the maximum weight of a truck to 80,000 lbs (36.3 metric tonnes). That includes the weight of the cab and the trailer but even if we assume those are weightless, that means CN transported the equivalent of 74,380 truckloads of grain in the month of June. That is 2,479 trucks a day.
That is only CN. CP also carries a lot of grain (though not as much as CN). It also doesn't include all the other goods and materials that they transport.