CTA review and Grain shipping

[Hopalong]

New government could do us a favour by releasing report recommendations immediately.
While grain movement is good at present, think it is only a matter of time until demand for rail shipping of other commodities picks up and lack of rail capacity shows up in wide basis levels for grain.
Remember all the years when wheat pools used to call for nationalization of CPR, never happened and CN was privatized.
Not suggesting nationalization is the answer but the sooner the better for grower groups to be able to offer constructive criticism.

[bucket]

Nationalizing is the only answer.

The two railways have done nothing to improve service but look to the weatherman for poorer crops.

If canada grew a 70 mmt crop it would be the 2013 and 1997 shipping years all over again.

And who's interest does Katib represent now. The middleman, the farmer or the railways?

[TOM4CWB]

Bucket

Happy Boxing day to you too!!!

He represents his 'shareholders' of course!

Be happy! We have competition!

Cheers!!!

[fjlip]

"Pretend" competition....

[blackpowder]

If the post office were forced to serve all citizens with door to door, what would the cost of postage be? Or the annual cost to all taxpayers?

If the cbc were the only broadcast media available, would they be the best?

Is govts role in business to be a mediator with teeth or the nations largest employer?

Agree that right now in Canada with regard to railroads we have neither good govt involvement nor fair service.

I believe that to achieve both, we need to stop wanting our cake and to eat it as well.
In the end a realistic solution for all would by necessity involve higher freight rates. Of course, that doesnt get votes, higher hidden taxes and wealth redistribution does.

[Hopalong]

Predict that railway nationalization will not be a recommendation,only mentioned it as an attention getter.
Big interest is in revenue entitlement agreement and what recommendations there are about it.
Agree that, one way or another, it is in grain grower interest to find a way to encourage railway and other grain handler shipping and handling investment that increases capacity.

[farmaholic]

Are we about to see cheaper rates now that things have quietened down...and things are moving better? I highly doubt it. So why pay more when you need it when you don't get a break when you deserve it?

THE RAILROADS can't have their cake and eat it too, either!

[farmaholic]

Too bad shareholders take higher priority than the customers and nation the company is there to serve. farming101 posted a hot link to a study done to determine if all the expansion by the two main railroads into each other's "territories" during the interwar years was worth it. Imagine, that would have been real competition, what domwe have now? Retraction and consolidation and abandonment. There is no ****ing way in hell the Hodgeville concrete should have been ALLOWED to be completely cut off from the main rail network. That terminal only got service for twenty years of its 25 year life. That means it hasn't seen service for the last five years. Has anyone shopped grain around into the northern tier States and seen some of their "elevators"? They must think we've lost our ****ing minds abandoning a facility like that....they must think, what a bunch of morons!

[blackpowder]

The Hodgeville story sounds like a shame although Im not familiar with it. Perhaps a letdown by govt.
Just suggesting that the shittiest cars I see on the CP line I live beside are the publicly owned grain cars.
The crush plant I go to has miles of new looking cars at its sidings as needed.
This mess took a century to create. It likely needs to be user pay but with the right amount of govt oversight.

[bucket]

Everyone I tried to talk to about the hodgeville issue said it was a federal issue. And the feds said they couldn't tell a private corporation what to do.



OK but you realize you just allowed the railways to tell the province to spend hundreds of millions on highway repairs.

So the premier, ag minister, highways minister sat there doing SFA with a conservative government in Ottawa that could have been convinced, just like the potash file, to put a hold on abandonment of that line.