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Originally Posted by sonysnob
How you can continue to advocate that a government currently $176 billion dollars in the hole, should be bailing out an unbelievably profitable railway is laughable.
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What in blazes are you on about? Where did I ever suggest anything that a reasonable person could in any way, shape or form interpret as advocating the "baliling out" of a railway? And is it even possible to "bail out" a profitable enterprise, of any sort? But, speaking of bailing out, didn't that very same heavily indebted government do just that for a couple of car companies a few years' back?
If you're going to engage in ranting, do at least try make it vaguely coherent and without making up things about others.
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Railway abandonment issues are federally regulated.
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You're just repeating an already-known and agreed-upon fact. But it just so happens that that already-known and agreed-upon fact is irrelevant to the topic at hand because the federal jurisdiction of the railway isn't an obstacle to some lower level of government acquiring the railway being abandonned.
Two things:
One. So it's your contention that the only reason for a government to acquire a railway line is to supposedly increase the profit of the railway company from which it is being acquired?
A government couldn't possibly do it for other reasons, such as to secure an important transport link for businesses in the area, or to run a passenger service, or to maintain redundancy in the rail network, or to rail bank the line for the future, or even to maintain rail access for an important military base? No, apparently the only reason to do it is to supposedly boost the profits of a railway company.
Two. The notion that a government acquiring a railway line from a railway company boosts that company's profit is dubious at best. When a railway company abandons a line and takes up the tracks and related infrastructure, it generally does one of two things with those track assets. It either reuses the assets elsewhere on its network (if they're in good enough condition) - which saves them from having to buy such materials - or it sells them. So when the government acquires the line instead, the company is really no better or worse off - it's in the same position as if it had sold the assets itself. Indeed, from what I have heard through the grapevine, the complaint that the railways have in the case of governments acquiring trackage in good condition is that it actually costs them more to buy the equivalent if their plan was to reuse the assets elsewhere.
So the upshot is that governments acquiring railway lines really doesn't do much to boost railway company profits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
Also a note, Ontario's transportation minister bikes to work. Further proof MTO isn't car dominated.
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You're conflating the ministry with the minister. Having a transport minister who bikes to work for a couple of years isn't going to change the institutional culture of the ministry as a whole, which remains overwhelmingly car-centric.
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