How much faster and easier would things proceed (have proceeded) on Bakersfield to Merced if the State of California owned the rail corridor properties used by UP and BNSF that already connected Bakersfield to Merced and leased them to the railroads? If 65 years ago when the feds were the muscle behind the interstate highway property acquisition -- property now owned by the states, not the feds, by the way -- they had included rail and built a public transportation corridor? If California had electrified the corridor 40 years ago as part of cleaning up the Central Valley air?
One of the reasons, at least in the American West, is that 150 years ago we gave the desirable routes for right-of-way to private rail companies and allowed them to maintain control, without even extracting requirements of good behavior, through innumerable mergers/acquisitions and multiple bankruptcies.
To pick an example I know... RTD's commuter rail system was always intended to have Denver-to-Boulder and Boulder-to-Longmont lines. There's an almost-never-used BNSF loop that is ideally positioned. It's almost never used because it's old (as in laid out in the 1890s old). Contemporary freight has to crawl on it because there are too many curves that are substandard. RTD offered to fix the curves, double-track where necessary, and upgrade all the crossings in exchange for usage and priority for commuter trains. BNSF's counteroffer was, "You pay for all the upgrades, you also give us $8B upfront, freight gets priority no matter what we do to the commuter schedule, and then we can talk about the annual lease amount." Because neither the state nor local governments can force BNSF to do anything, we have no commuter trains to Boulder and a right-of-way that is slowly disintegrating through neglect.
Post-WWII Europe had the sense to have the government own the rights-of-way and any private rail companies had to lease usage. When France wants to extend high-speed rail, they tell the freight companies how things are going to work.
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How much faster and easier would things proceed (have proceeded) on Bakersfield to Merced if the State of California owned the rail corridor properties used by UP and BNSF that already connected Bakersfield to Merced and leased them to the railroads? If 65 years ago when the feds were the muscle behind the interstate highway property acquisition -- property now owned by the states, not the feds, by the way -- they had included rail and built a public transportation corridor? If California had electrified the corridor 40 years ago as part of cleaning up the Central Valley air?
One of the reasons, at least in the American West, is that 150 years ago we gave the desirable routes for right-of-way to private rail companies and allowed them to maintain control, without even extracting requirements of good behavior, through innumerable mergers/acquisitions and multiple bankruptcies.
To pick an example I know... RTD's commuter rail system was always intended to have Denver-to-Boulder and Boulder-to-Longmont lines. There's an almost-never-used BNSF loop that is ideally positioned. It's almost never used because it's old (as in laid out in the 1890s old). Contemporary freight has to crawl on it because there are too many curves that are substandard. RTD offered to fix the curves, double-track where necessary, and upgrade all the crossings in exchange for usage and priority for commuter trains. BNSF's counteroffer was, "You pay for all the upgrades, you also give us $8B upfront, freight gets priority no matter what we do to the commuter schedule, and then we can talk about the annual lease amount." Because neither the state nor local governments can force BNSF to do anything, we have no commuter trains to Boulder and a right-of-way that is slowly disintegrating through neglect.
Post-WWII Europe had the sense to have the government own the rights-of-way and any private rail companies had to lease usage. When France wants to extend high-speed rail, they tell the freight companies how things are going to work.