High-Speed Rail: Albany should heed CSX’s legitimate concern

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2011/0 ... hould.html

In some political circles, CSX — the freight company that allows passenger trains on its tracks from Buffalo to Albany — is viewed as unnecessarily delaying the introduction of high-speed rail in Upstate New York.

But some of the things CSX is insisting upon in negotiations with the state seem quite reasonable.

Discuss! I certainly think CSX has a point. It's all about negotiation.

Here you have a state that is run by inept and downright corrupt politicians vs a railroad that probably has the worst public relations and probably the worst management as well in the entire industry. It is pretty difficult to take sides on this one.
Noel Weaver

Most of it is CSX's property, either play by their rules or buy your own right-of-way. You might just be able to put the West Shore back together again for a couple billion, depending how many people you have to sue, there aren't too many buildings built over it.

lvrr325 wrote:Most of it is CSX's property, either play by their rules or buy your own right-of-way. You might just be able to put the West Shore back together again for a couple billion, depending how many people you have to sue, there aren't too many buildings built over it.

The West Shore had nowhere the physical plant that the Mohawk Main Line has. There were a lot of curves and road crossings and today it would probably be impossibe to restore the railroad track on it.
As I have said previously, probably the best way to handle this one is to re-place old tracks 3 and 4 with new tracks to the north of the presnt tracks 1 and 2. In most cases the freight activity is on the north side of the ROW and the passenger stations are on the south side with the only exception being Amsterdam. Build two new tracks for CSX freight operations and rebuild the present two tracks on the south side of the ROW for lpassenger service with speeds as high as possible. Don't hold your breath for anything like this to happen.
Noel Weaver

Aggressively protecting your capacity in a growing marketplace to two very important markets (NY/NJ and New England) in which you hold the biggest rail marketshare and competitive advantage, and for which you paid dearly at the Conrail split, sounds like prudent management to me. CSX's 1-to-6 ratio of displacement for twice-the-speed passenger trains to freight trains says a lot and makes sense, even if overstated. I agree with the editorial- NY needs to listen to CSX. Protect freight capacity first and if you want high-speed (high-frequency) passenger rail justify, finance and build the necessary additional and/or seperate infrastructure to make that happen.

I see sarcasm is lost on some folks.

Is there a market for this service? Will there ever be a market for this service?

Sounds like some contractors are trying to get the politicians to throw money at them for a project with no legs.

Where are all those fast rebuilt turbo trains taxpayers footed the bill for?

These people can't manage rebuilding a few train sets and putting them in service. Why on earth should anyone believe they could rebuild a few hundred miles of railroad for better speed?