In my e-mail this evening comes a request from the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, asking me to e-mail my Congresscritters about the STB hearing on the 12th.
Official page is here. Don’t you just love PACs that keep PSR-laden railroads from the consequences of their ongoing ‘choices’?
Knock yourself out modifying the ridiculous boilerplate if you like. Personally I think efforts like this are, if anything, counterproductive.
OM, could you explain briefly what what the three STB proposals are?
I have to admit I’ve never read Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” but isn’t there a passage in the book where Smith says (in so many words) that if you’re in business, and you foul-up big-time you deserve all the trouble you get?
And don’t expect others to pull your fat out of the fire like it’s a right?
Oh, I don’t know…sometimes I wish that back when I was in highschool someone had taken me aside and opened my eyes to the lucrative world of influence peddling. Of course back then we had no way of foreseeing the internet …but the whole idea of selling someone a shoulder to cry on just never even occurred to me, little naive me…
These issues mostly predate the PSR movement. If PSR went away, these issues would still remain.
The first is forced reciprocal switching. Allowing railroad B access to all of railroad A’s customers at a point where the two connect, plus a zone extending for a certain length in all directions from where they connect. And the same access for railroad A to railroad B’s customers. I think the proposal is 30 miles, although some want it everywhere. Discussed here over the years as Open Access.
I’m not sure about the second item, deregulating certain catagories of freight. The railroads were partially deregulated with the Staggers Act. The STB maintains some oversight, one would think total deegulation would be something they want. I’m missing something, but it’s possible that the dereg proposal may transfer some of that oversight from the STB to some other Federal agency. One that might be less favorable to the railroads.
The third is allowing the STB to set rates. Reregulation.
Some or all of the provisions are favored by shipper’s groups, especially those made up of large shippers/receivers who would have a hard time (expensive) converting to nonrail transportation.
Jeff
Thanks, Jeff.
The fact of these hearings reflects the perceived political pressure by shippers who feel that ‘recent changes’ in railroad operations are of such impact that renewed Government oversight is necessary. While these changes are not all attributable to some interpretation of PSR or other, I think most of them are, and both the shipper and Government perception appears to be that this revolution in operations model is a major reason.
I expect Trains will have at least one person covering these hearings as they happen, and that Brian or someone like him will post the findings here as a link to the Newswire.
From the linked propaganda:
“Today’s market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure.”
[#dots]
I would expect that shippers always feel that more government oversight is necessary. They always feel that railroads hold an unfair advantage where there is no competition to hold rates down.
So shippers may feel that PSR heightens the continuos threat to shippers, and so it is time to push back; or they may just see leverage for their ongoing cause by blaming PSR because it is in the news as being a big revolution in favor of railroad management. I have a feeling that much of that the loud shipper protest over PSR was just that.
And by the same token - many of those complaining rail customers have a service and price monoply on their own customers - they are upset that they can’t force the carriers to provide service at the customers desired price point of next to nothing.
We need to look no further back than the period between WW II and the enactment of Stagger to see what a under compensatory rate structure that was difficult to change wrought upon the rail industry.
And war is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.
The STB is also rethinking on how it determines cost of capital. This is used to determine revenue adequecy, whether the railroads are making enough to operate and maintain their infrastructure.
https://www.railwayage.com/freight/stbs-cost-of-capital-dilemma/
Jeff
Emblematic of todays obscuring buzzword bovine excrement
For somebody else, but not when it affects their operations.
Unsurprising their editors left out the end of the sentence; it should have read:
“Today’s market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure, then divert that revenue directly to investor profit before wasting it that way.”
OOOOO, Mod-man, that’s COLD!
True, but COLD! [(-D]
Right on!!
I think many are missing the point of that statement. It’s referring to how things have been since Staggers took effect as opposed to how things were before. Does anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days?
I think the addition to the original statement by Overmod is also valid. I’m afraid that the short sighted focus to appease the short term investors at the expense of everyone else will eventually cause some kind of reregulation. Whether it be a form of open access or direct rate control, it will not benefit the industry long term. About the only good willl be with the cash cow slaughtered, those short term investors will dump and run to other industries and companies. Unfortunately, all investors may also leave.
Jeff
I’d rather that than this clown show we currently have running.
Spoken by one in the trenches with the bullets and shrapnel flying around.
I believe it was a Trains item, IIRC about the time of the Milwaukee Road’s final bankruptcy, where they said the problems of the Northeast had reached Tucumcari and Puget Sound. Much of the industry was in trouble, some on life support. The healthy ones were also in danger and they knew it. Some like SP, weren’t as healthy as they seemed to be.
PreStaggers, it was doubtful the industry could survive in private hands. Many, including some of the healthy railroads, were expecting some form of nationalization. (Enough that some were setting up separate corporate entities to shield their non-railroad holdings from being nationalized.)
I don’t like the current way the major carriers do business either. It’s a business strategy to benefit the few short term, while hurting the many long term. But that strategy afflicts most, if not all, of large American business.
But do we really want to go back to having railroads in the physical and financial conditions of the Penn Central, Rock Island, Milwaukee Road, and many others?
Jeff