CN is not a "Canadian Amtrak" or even an Amtrak competitor. It's a publicly-traded freight rail company that doesn't currently operate passenger service. The US obviously has analogs: Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, etc.
Like Amtrak, VIA is a federal government-owned operator of intercity passenger rail services. And just like Amtrak, it operates mostly on tracks owned by private freight railways such as CN.
> Unfortunately, though, the closest thing the U.S. has to a national rail provider like CN is the chronically under-funded Amtrak
One funny thing is the Canadian CN is..CN. It has extensive operations in the US
> Big business, after all, should be expected to put its interests first, no matter the cost to the public, be that a delayed train or weeks-long power outages in the dead of winter.
If CN is a business, kudos to them for contributing to the civic good during a time of crisis, unlike so many American corporations.
Such as the United States Federal Government under the current administration?
> Unfortunately, though, the closest thing the U.S. has to a national rail provider like CN is the chronically under-funded Amtrak
I quoted "Canadian Amtrak" as an expression of my own making, not one from the article.
The article is saying Amtrak, a half baked VIA, is the closest thing they, in Texas, have to CN. That's not saying CN is close to Amtrak.
If my buddy has a Humvee and I say, "Unfortunately, the closest thing I have is a Schwinn", I'm not saying their Humvee is a bicycle.
Quotes are commonly used to mark a specific novel phrase. I was not intending to imply that it was a phrase from the article.
> The article is saying Amtrak, a half baked VIA, is the closest thing they, in Texas, have to CN.
I disagree with the interpretation, and this claim is still wrong.
First of all, the part I quoted makes a statement about the US, not just Texas. I realize that the previous sentence mentions Texas, but this sentence is clearly naming the country as a whole.
Second, if the article is saying that, this claim would also be incorrect. There are actual rail providers that own significant amounts of railway in Texas, and Amtrak (like VIA Rail) is not one of them.
Here's a decent map: https://www.intekfreight-logistics.com/intermodal-network-ma...
> If my buddy has a Humvee and I say, "Unfortunately, the closest thing I have is a Schwinn", I'm not saying their Humvee is a bicycle.
Yes. Unfortunately for the author, the US has multiple Humvee equivalents depending on the region, so saying that the "closest thing I have is a Schwinn" is just false when Union Pacific (among others) exists in Texas and is in the same market as Canadian National.
Yes: Update: Feb. 23, 10:12 a.m. ET: An erroneous reference to CN as a national rail provider has been removed, the railway having been publicly traded since 1995.