An innovative government organization?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Prior to its privatization in 1995, CN had a number of firsts and innovations to its credit. Among them:

First to operate a diesel locomotive in mainline service (1928).

The turbo-train (1970s)

The first to make the safety cab (now called the North American cab) standard on all new locomotives (1973)

Among the first to install radio communications in passenger trains (1920s and 30s),

The Draper Taper on SD50 and SD60 locomotives.

Few would argue that CN’s financials look a lot better since its privatization. But innovation and new ideas that make it stand out from the others seem to be fewer these days as everything is geared to generating good financial results over the short term and increasing shareholder value.

2

In today’s world the thread title would be considered a oxy-trimoron!

Innovative

Governmental

Organization

Government’s as represented most recently by the US Congres are neither innovative or organized and to top it all they shut down their basic function governance.

3

You’re right Baltacd, governments aren’t usually associated with innovation even in the best of times, so I thought that in light of the recent machinations in Washington it might be interesting to highlight some positives.

4

The United States armed forces have come up with many useful innovations like GPS and even duct tape (one of the best inventions of all time)

5

Government Research and Development programs and contracts have added much to our lives. First that comes to mind is the military aircraft contracts which eventually produce commercial planes, the space program which brought us many things besides Tang, Even some railroad technology has evolved from some of these military R&D needs in a back door way like the Metroliner trainsets and applied technology.

6

It probably is more proper to say that the U.S. government (taxpayers) has funded research and development programs that in many instances have added much to our lives. Most of the outputs were developed by competitive businesses, i.e. Boeing, Douglas, Teledyne, etc.

7

Yes, “developed by competitive businesses”, that is private enterprises, but paid for and contracted by the US Government nevertheless. If they didn’t receive the government money would they or could they have made such progress possible? If so, at what greater costs? Thus, railroad progress has not been as forthcoming because the Government has not put the money up for R&D but rather the railroads and the railroad users have had to do so themselves and at greater costs, too.

8

Americans like to say that the high prescription drug prices you pay compared to everywhere else (about three times as much as Canada) are to support research on new drugs, but in fact most US drug research is done at US government financed universities. What private drug companies do is take the research that already has been done and package it as a salable product. But if you want to finance discounted Canadian drugs with high US drug prices, thanks much!

9

The internet was developed by academia and the government’s National Science Foundation, the source of much research funding.

10

CN had a huge R&D budget once-upon-a-time. That is gone. In fact, most RRs have a relatively small test lab departments these days. Innovation tends to take place at the industry/supplier level these days, with testing done at the AAR’s facility in Pueblo. (leased from DOT).

11

While academia certainly had a part of it, the first function “Internet” was “ARPANet”, developed by DARPA, a part of DOD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

12

Please allow me a personal reply; it is not intended in any way to be self-serving, but, rather, to reflect the facts as they happened:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is, in general, not considered to be a progressive, innovative government organization. One major exception to that reputation was something that I became quiite involved with a number of years ago, namely Class A Foam and Compressed Air Foam Systems.

I shall refrain from going into the details of what this involves, as it would take entirely too long to write, too much space on the forum, and few, if any, would read it. In short, this was a study carried out, to begin with, by two BLM employees detached from their normal duties at what was then the Boise Interagency Fire Center, now the National Interagency Fire Center, the center of excellent for the Federal wildland fire community, and by extension, cooperation with the rest of the wildland fire community.

These two men started the study, to see if what was, at the time, an entirely new technology in wildland fire suppression. I learned about the work that they were doing, contacted them, and ended up being the one person most responsible for transferring their discovery and the technology from the wildland community to the structural fire suppression community.

Today, Class A Foam and Compressed Air Foam Systems are used by structural fire departments worldwide, helping to save lives and property. While I cannot, of course, prove it, I am quite convinced that had it not been for the innovative attlitude of BLM, the technology would never have been developed for the wildland fire community and, subsequently for the structural fire community.