I believe the secret to getting any cooperation from the so-called freight railroads, is that any passenger proposal must provide a a win-win solution. Intelligently run businesses generally respond favorably to that.

True enough though, that some railroads are not run so intelligently - more like petulant babies. Witness the refusal of the UP to accept state money they themselves said they needed, in order to be able to afford important improvements on Donner; all because the state insisted on something for the public too. Apparently, it was way to presumptuous of us, that we should actually want something in return for our own money! The result is that Donner remains a pathetic hodgepodge of special movement restrictions and capacity limitations - a dispatching nightmare.

But other railroads do much better, and are much more likely to accept a win-win proposal. Take a hypothetical case where an existing high traffic single track freight line with some two track stretches, is often operating at capacity. Add to that the fact that there are already multiple passenger round trips on the line. This becomes by definition a dispatching headache. Especially so when anything goes wrong, because there are no available work-arounds and no spare capacity for quick recovery.

Along comes a proposal to increase the passenger traffic; but with only minimal capacity improvements. Even if the improvements fully mitigate the effect of additional passenger trains (they usually do not!), the railroad likely sees nothing in it for them and believes it a bad precedent besides.

Now suppose the proposal is a bit more visionary, looking to do the whole capacity improvement job right up front. The proposal would offer to pay in full, to complete a 2nd main track the whole distance - and half the cost of a middle 3rd main track for most of the way.

The cost of adding track to an existing line is generally peanuts, when compared to a whole new dedicated right of way. Dedicated righto'way should be kept to an absolute minimum (such as over Tejon Pass). The railroads of course, would actually orchestrate the construction work themselves, as they are far more financially efficient at it than any government agency can ever hope to be - and besides, it is all on their righto'way.

One outer track is then operated almost exclusively by freight service; while the other outer track is almost exclusively for passenger trains (of any speed). The middle track is shared, for run-arounds and full speed multi-track meets.

The result now is that the freight capacity has nearly doubled at a cost to the freight company of only one half what they would have paid, and the passenger capacity has been multiplied several times over at a far lower cost to the public. There is now a contingency in the available track capacity and ways to work around problems.

Moreover, since one track almost exclusively carries passenger trains with little interference, they could go as fast as we make the curvature and track standards allow. Hourly long distance passenger service could easily be supported all day long - at almost any speed. Short Bursts (1-2 hours) of more frequent passenger service could even be wrung out of it with more careful planning.

With far flung cities and low population density (compared to China, Japan, or even Europe), this amount of capacity should be sufficient at for least a generation, and would have been built at the lowest possible cost (the only way we will ever succeed at it).

So far, most proposals for shared use, involve the get something for nothing, or screw-you approaches; which always turn out to be lose-lose. Conversely, win-win approaches similar to this hypothetical case, have been successful recently; even in the United States; and even with the Union Pacific itself. Come to the bargaining table with something good for both sides, and both can win. What properly run business could resist that.

Besides, if we don't do it in a financially doable way - or the railroads refuse even win-win solutions, and we thus fail at it entirely; then when the inevitable collapse of the highway-automobile-foreign-oil paradigm comes (NOT FAR OFF), our economy will then collapse permanently along with it. That will be lose for us - and lose for the railroad industry as well.

Maybe the Berkshire Hathaways of the world already know that! It's now time that myopic politicians (of any persuasion) figured it out too!

OPB