>>1252303>The TGV services are being rebranded as InOui!I can't believe they're just throwing the TGV brand away.
Anyways, vertical separation of railroads, while well-intentioned, is a dumb policy.
To be fair, the EU's working on it. They dropped the requirement for vertical seperation of railways in favor of simply requiring non-discriminatory pricing towards open-access operators. It's sort of like the common carrier status of American railroads, except for the trains that run on them instead of the cargo they carry.
There's also been some good progress within the countries with vertically separated railways. In Britain, for example, there's been moves towards more open-access operators as the franchise system is increasingly seen as flawed and inadequate.
The issue with vertical separation, and why it's increasingly on the downtrend, is that the incentives of the track owner are different from the owner of the trains running on them. The track owner wants to keep their maintenance costs as low as possible, and to minimize the wear and tear caused by passing trains. The train owner wants to move as much people or cargo possible with the least amount of expense. There, the conflict arises.
The track owner has little-to-no incentive to expand or improve their network beyond what it's already capable of. Thus there's very little impetus (except political) to expand overloaded lines by widening tunnels, allowing higher axle loads, or longer trains. Therefore a lot less expansion gets done than if the train owners owned the tracks.
The train owners have every incentive to do the opposite. Since the fee is constant per-mile-of-track, they have no reason to try and minimize their wear and tear on the tracks. This is one of the reasons why the pacers still run despite their axle configuration - it's not the company's problem if its 4-wheel axle configuration constantly scrapes against the track.
