Our infrastructure challenges are really because we took over rail lines that were falling apart. We're only 15 years old or younger. When CN and CP were deciding to devolve some of their branch lines—of course, if you had a used car and you knew you were going to be junking it, you wouldn't be keeping it up to par, right?—they didn't maintain them. When we took over the short lines, they were in really bad repair.
We've been band-aiding and band-aiding, but what we really need is something like the 45G tax credit that they have in the U.S. That tax credit has been studied by McKinsey and other third parties and massive improvements have been shown in both economic outcomes and safety based on that. That's a 50% matching program, tax credit, that has been running in the U.S. for about 10 years, and will soon be made permanent in the U.S.
That, for infrastructure, is really of massive importance, because that allows us to continue to improve our existing infrastructure and then releases funds that we could use for big projects like the NTCF. Right now, we just don't have that. That would be what we really need.
Then, in terms of carbon, the number of trucks that are going on the road when short lines can't operate.... We have some short lines where, because of our infrastructure, we're only going 25 cars at a time. We're operating at one-sixth of our potential. When there's a huge harvest and everyone wants to get their crops out, and we're limping along at only 25 cars at 10 miles an hour, we just can't meet the requirements of our customers. They end up trucking. That's destroying our roads, destroying the environment, for no reason.
Short lines can have a huge positive impact on carbon emissions, if given the opportunity.
