With regard to freight services, the potential here for freeing up the existing corridor to allow for increased movement of freight by rail could be quite important to the corridor. If the passenger trains could be moved to a dedicated line, whether they're high-speed lines or not, and the existing corridor could be dedicated for freight services, there could be a substantial increase in freight movement along the line.
We do know from experience that freight rail is more environmentally sustainable than trucking-based freight movement. You can also have logistics centres where you connect the two in important multimodal locations outside of the major metropolitan areas.
My perspective is that one of the key elements here is creating a situation in which there is no conflict between freight and passenger services along the major elements of the corridor so that freight can move as freely as passenger service.
With regard to urban transit, there was a mention before. I agree with another panellist that one of the key goals here must be to ensure that the distance between the stations of the future line and the centres of population in the major metropolitan areas is as short as possible. Whether that distance is reduced by improved urban transit or by having the terminus in a very central location depends on the city, I suppose, but without that kept in mind, you could have people experiencing long-distance travel to get to the rail stations similar to what they experience with airports today, which would defeat the point for investing in the rail service. You need to get those rail stations in central, very transit-accessible locations.