Rural Commuter Rail

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Ok, but the city had an agreement with the owner of the railway to use it. Moose does not have any such agreements.

That's probably one of the least of MOOSE's concerns with the exception of Ottawa and Chelsea. In all other cases, MOOSE could easily and reasonably obtain access to tracks.

Yes, all of these things have to do with how long the construction would take. Even if a bank gave Moose a $1,000,000,000.00 letter of credit tomorrow:

Moose cannot even get access to the tracks/land in question unless the federal government passes legislation invoking the declaratory power, the CTA orders the various owners of the railways/lands to give Moose access to their tracks/land on terms favourable to Moose, and all of the court challenges work their way through the system. That is probably 4-5 years, assuming the federal government is positively disposed to follow that strategy (and we have had ZERO indication the federal government wants any part of this scheme).

That's assuming MOOSE jumps straight to attempting to use declaratory power, which is not stated anywhere in their plans.

Under Moose's proposed business plan, Moose does not own any station. So before shovels can go into the ground, Moose has to find 50 station owners willing to pay Moose a regular fee for trains to stop at their station. Those station owners have to get the various municipal approvals, build the necessary infrastructure and start trying to sell houses to homeowners willing to pay a massive premium for such houses.

Something I didn't mention earlier, but MOOSE is likely already in communication with multiple other contractors, it's just that only one has been publicly named.
I think in MOOSE's plan, stations and some houses get built first, and then more houses get built as MOOSE continues to operate. MOOSE's plan obviously has huge upfront costs that will take a decent amount of time to recuperate which might take place as people continue to buy homes over time.

Yes, in addition to asking the CTA to order major expenditures, there were also jurisdictional questions. So what?

The request to order the city was a subparagraph or a single paragraph in a document that primarily focused on the status of the bridge. Also, I added it to my post afterwards, but "normal railway maintenance, inspection and testing regimen across the Prince of Wales Bridge" could just mean "making sure the bridge doesn't fall apart more than it has".

Ok, but you could also find the answers yourself if you would just read the documents.
Two of the 3 requests to the CTA for which decisions have been reached requested the CTA to order the municipalities to undertake upgrades
"[2] MOOSE requests the Agency to order the City to restore the Bridge."

"An order that all tracks and related infrastructure be rebuilt or refurbished to federal railway standards."

This would have had major costs to municipalities, and no gain since no existing railway company wanted to use the track.

As I said, what the CTA said in their ruling doesn't seem to match up with what is stated in MOOSE's original request to the CTA (which I linked). You should read MOOSE's original document.

Another CTA order and a court case pertained to Chelsea trying to pull up the tracks. I do not know the exact cost to the municipality that the Moose request would have involved, but the tracks are probably worth something on the scrap market and there are probably insurance costs related to the track.

According to MOOSE, they would finance upgrades and repairs of the corridor. If the CTA had ruled in favour of MOOSE then... well Chelsea wouldn't have been permitted to tear the tracks up. That's all. They would have actually saved the money it cost them to hire a contractor to remove the tracks.

but the tracks are probably worth something on the scrap market and there are probably insurance costs related to the track.

Unsubstantiated claims don't really help your argument...