Liberals’ high-speed rail: a fast track to privatization: Experts say Trudeau’s plan will sideline VIA Rail—and passengers will pay the price | The Breach
I wouldn't be surprised, the govt loves investing in things and then just giving it away to private companies to squander. It's the 3pp way.
Also: via rail sucks. They don't actually maintain their tracks, they just keep slowing down the trains instead.
VIA rail doesn't own much track at all. Almost all (97%) of the track they operate on is owned by other companies, like CN.
And that is why their service sucks. They get second priority to any cargo trains that CN wants to run down them.
Ah makes sense.
I wasn't even concerned about the low priority of passenger cars. I meant the physical condition of the track itself, and the resulting reduction in top speed along many section in the maritimes.
a fast track to privatization
The winning bidder is a public/private partnership, so yes, it does.
It depends on what the public role is though, no? E.g. who would have the ownership of the tracks, trains, who'd operate it, etc. It could be a scheme that leaves some of that in public hands. At this point I don't know if this is clear since they're in a design/feasibility stage.
While Cadence will technically report to Alto, the consortium will maintain control over both building the line and running its trains.
The federal government will subsidize the consortium’s work but will have little control over how its money is used.
It sounds like the public role is "moneybags." While Cadence is pretty much running the show, it's quite unclear to me where actual ownership lies, though. In an article of this length, that's a disturbing detail to find absent.
The plan notably excludes involvement from VIA Rail, Canada’s only company with experience running a national daily passenger rail service.
Alto is officially known as VIA HFR – VIA TGF Inc., and their website says,
VIA Rail provides advice on the technical and operational aspects of existing passenger railway services.
So does that directly contradict the article or is it a semantical difference that doesn't detract from its thesis?
It certainly seems to contradict the notion that VIA has no involvement - in fact, as near as I can tell, Alto is still a VIA subsidiary. But maybe that's wrong, it's a little unclear.
I don't think it necessarily invalidates the idea of it being a "fast track to privatization," or that ticket prices will be high.
Hopefully the contract being awarded doesn't preclude the option for regulation of things like fare caps.