[cheschire]

When one company controls both the trains AND the infrastructure, it results in an unfair advantage over anyone else wishing to use the rail. Commuter trains needing to pull over to let cargo trains from the parent company through, for example.

[ghaff]

Which doesn't seem like a particular issr with commuter rail (or Northeast Corridor) in general. It is an issue on long distance rail as I understand it especially when passenger trains get off schedule which is often.

[jcranmer]

Having ridden the Northeast Corridor end-to-end the entire route, by far the worst section to traverse on Amtrak is western Connecticut. Which also happens to be the only bit of the NEC that Amtrak doesn't own--it's owned by Metro North instead.

[lokar]

I think the NE corridor has a dedicated right of way

[ghaff]

More or less. I believe they still share railways with freight but different situation from the rest of the country as a whole.

[AnimalMuppet]

Unfair? How is that unfair? If I built the track, then I own the track, and I decide what runs on the track. Anybody else thinking they have the right to run on it can get lost. A private railroad line is not an open-access situation. They'll carry your railroad car, but they'll do it in their train. Any argument otherwise is an argument against private ownership, which I view extremely skeptically.

(It's a little different in the case of commuter rail, where there's a contractual arrangement.)

[stouset]

You are willfully ignoring the reality that building a competing rail network that services the same area is wildly impractical given the land requirements.

This is the same argument behind having multiple providers to share one set of power lines, telephone cables, etc. Duplicate copies of physical infrastructure are pointless, wasteful, and unlikely to occur in practice, so there’s rarely competitive pressure.

[CGMthrowaway]

We did it with subways in NYC, why not with rail lines over farmland?

[harimau777]

How much government funding went, directly or indirectly, into building the track? What sort of deals where put in place to facilitate building them? Where did all that land come from? What sort of special rights (e.g. the ability to build level crossings) have railways been granted?

[lokar]

How did you get the land for the track?

[AnimalMuppet]

By buying it. Even the land-grant railroads bought the land, in the form of carrying the US mail at reduced rates for the next 80 years. (During World War 2, when the government was desperate for money, they let the railroads buy themselves out of the reduced mail rates. So it worked out to payments for 80 years with a balloon payment at the end.)

[harimau777]

Things get complicated with a common good like land. It's not particularly just that just because someone purchased some natural resource a hundred years ago people who weren't even born at the time are screwed. Presumably every generation should have a say in how society operates.

[CGMthrowaway]

I see. So you are suggesting like a Standard Oil or British Rail type breakup?

[AnimalMuppet]

No, they're suggesting something more along the lines of Standard Oil being required to refine anyone's oil in their refinery, or carry it in their pipelines. But the one suggesting it didn't offer to let anyone stay in their house, and to me that's the same issue. Does the owner of private property get to control access and use, or not?

You say that the railroad is a business, not a private residence. All right, does Home Depot have to let Lowe's use part of their floor space? No, they don't.

[AlotOfReading]

Property owners generally don't have complete freedom to control access, hence easements.

Even if those weren't a thing, there's a coherent political view (which I'm not arguing for) that "resolves" the issue: nationalizing the infrastructure and licensing access back like the UK.

It's a strawman though. There's no reason anyone needs to hold identical political views on the property rights of private houses, home improvement stores, and rail infrastructure. They're different things.