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North Carolina Railroad Co. contributes $15.5 million to new state fund
Oh where is the goose when we need him: The evil socialist North Carolina RR is paying in dividends for the benefit of the public. I bet their lease holders even have union labour. Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My!!!
North Carolina Railroad may be the prototype for track ownership on the federal level. This would be similar to highway and airport ownership. Train operations would be more lucrative.
SSSHHHH!. Do you HAVE to sound a “goose call”? Let’s enjoy the peace & quiet!
Love it!
NCRR is good for freight and passenger service in NC.
Australia has government owned open access tracks. The problem with the railway companies using these open access tracks is that it can be no body’s task to build spur line or otherwise improve the system…
Cudos to NC for getting it right!
Re: socialism: the NC RR was built by the state in the 1850’s. Anybody who can make a solid case that the government of North Carolina in the 1850’s was remotely socialist has surely been smoking something other than tobacco :-).
Re: state ownership being a good idea: for most purposes, the line pretty much behaves as if it were owned by Norfolk Southern. The lease is long-term, so it’s not like the state can just up and turn to another operator at will (well, every century or so they could, but that’s not a whole lot of accountability :-)).
The two differences I see are: (1) NS doesn’t have to pay taxes on a line it doesn’t own. Instead, it has to make the lease payments, but those get negotiated (as noted, once every century or so) and aren’t subject to the whims of one city’s tax assessors or another. (See: Jersey City, NJ.) (2) The state gets more leverage with NS when they want to do something like run passenger trains than they might if they weren’t the landlord.
There may be other differences I’ve missed, of course.