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Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
The Waterous's were the driving force for initiating the study by the town of Banff, have navigated federal and CPR processes to develop the tran station into a intercept lot hub, and were the people who at least started the engagement with the infrastructure bank.
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And yet, no evidence at all of any actual investors. Without any evidence, I have no option but to assume these investors haven't actually made promises. These lines will need subsidies. Who invests hundreds of millions in a project they don't know the price or potential profit of? No one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
And sorry, private interests influence everything, and our system works pretty well.
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The private sector is awesome and I'm as big a fan of free trade as there is. But some things the private sector cannot do well, and natural monopolies, like infrastructure, are one of them. At least without so much regulation that they become quasi public.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
If the CPR was public, it would be just as busy, and it would be just as important to not displace freight. The federal government could dictate to the private rail companies (as the regulator) just as much as they could to public rail companies (as the owner) to accommodate passenger rail. You're seeing a symptom (no passenger rail) as a consequence of ownership, when it is a consequence of capacity and economics. No ownership change changes the fundamental economics.
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The fundamental economics would be hugely different with public ownership. A private owner can only place value on the direct payments made to it by a passenger train operator. Whereas a public owner would be able to include a whole host of external benefits in its calculation - tourism, GDP growth, health benefits, carbon reductions, reduced cost of roads - all things irrelevant to CP's interests.
A public owner would be able to make investments and allocate resources to all potential operators on a line, whereas CP only cares about itself - that's not a slur just an absolute fact of the corporate economy. Sure, if a good enough offer was made to CP then they might have to accept running trains on their lines, for a price. But it would be on their terms, since they are a monopoly. We both know what the effect of monopolies are on the structure of business relationships.
That said, I can see the benefit of a structure like that used on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, that might be used on HFR, where the public still has substantial control of how the asset can be used. I just don't want to give a blank cheque to a company that gets sole dictate of the railway for the next thousand years.