William W.
Lead Service Attendant
There is a difference between taking land to create a ROW, and taking existing, in-service track that is essential for a company's operation. In general, taking land to create new ROW is not overly injurious because the loss in property is spread out among many, and won't overly hurt an individual. To take existing ROW (that isn't abandoned or not used) directly harms a single person/organization. If a company puts tons of money, time, and effort into something, it doesn't seem right for the government to then come in a and force a sale (monopoly conditions excluded, of course). This is especially true if the property loss would result in a large loss in revenue.To construct an ROW where none exists will require application of eminent domain on someone else to create the easement. So are you just partial to eminent domains not being used against railroads or would your rather that eminent domain was not used at all and no new ROWs were created? Gotta make up your mind.I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?
Perhaps I'm making a bit of a straw man argument, but I'm pretty sure that exactly that has been suggested in previous posts.