New federal bill proposes to give Canada's passenger trains priority | Urbanized
New federal bill proposes to give Canada's passenger trains priority | Urbanized
The federal government is considering a bill to give passenger trains priority over freight trains on Canada's shared railway tracks.
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As a Canadian, I'll believe it when I see it. There will be so much bureaucratic red tape between the feds and the municipalities that I'm willing to bet whatever they have planned will be a shadow of its original concept by the time any ground is broken.
Hell, it might go like the light rail projects and the whole deal might get cancelled or they'll go with a whole new engineering firm at the last second, costing exponentially more money for an inferior product.
I want to believe the government doesn't do things poorly on purpose, but when it constantly goes awry in the planning stages and they keep going anyway you do have to wonder about the level of competence being demonstrated by ministers and cabinet members.
There will be so much bureaucratic red tape between the feds and the municipalities
Not sure what municipalities have to do with this? Rail is exclusively in the federal jurisdiction.
You also seem to be referring to HFR, which is unrelated to this topic (though it's mentioned as background on Via Rail).
So where do you think that the tracks will be going, if not through cities and municipal centers? The feds are going to be up against a ton of pushback if they try to ram this through purely because they have jurisdiction. The negotiation alone will take years.
Also I'm referring to the Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa light rail transit projects. One is doing better than the other (hint: it's not the country's capital) but neither were very well-planned, well-executed, or well-received.
Are you talking about HFR? That's not what this article is about, it's about passenger priority on rail owned by freight companies. They mention HFR, but that's just background about Via Rail.
However, if you do want to talk about that, the intention of HFR is not to lay much new track and next-to-none in built up areas. Even if they were laying new tracks, Municipalities have zero authority over the Federal Government. If the provinces wanted to get involved, there could be a fight, but both Ontario & Quebec seem to be completely behind HFR.
As for the ION in Waterloo, you have no idea what you're talking about. It is highly used, pretty well planned, and very well received. It was shutdown for a few days last year ice build-up, and that's unacceptable and the Region is dealing with the operator to avoid that in the future. Other than that, there haven't been any major issues.
REM is doing alright.
I wonder what their secret to success was? Oh, right, planning.
The REM still had a ton of beurecratic slow downs and a lot of NIMBYism
NIMBYism did shut down the east line.
Because an elevated rail would ruin the streetscape of... 14 car dealships and an oil refinery.
Inb4 the final text of the bill passed by Parliament:
Passenger trains shall have right of way on trackage used exclusively by passenger trains