Urban Planning

The thing that also happens (in both the US and Canada) is that if the rail company has a choice between a three minute delay on a freight train to allow a passenger train to pass, or an hour delay on a passenger train to allow the freight train to pass, they'll always pick the freight train to have priority.

That reminds me of how cities granted big companies permission to expand their company skyscrapers on the condition that the companies also build public plazas so that the citizens could have places to gather and encourage public engagement. The companies didn't want the general public just hanging out in front of their buildings though, so they deliberately designed the plazas to be unappealing and unpleasant to be in to force people to stay away.