FYI - this is a reposting of a topic that got hijacked by LC then was deleted by Bergie.
Hmmmmm, a little “good cop/bad cop” conspiracy? Let’s hope not.
Anyway, this is a condensed version of some comments made by former FRA administrator Gil Carmichael regarding the lack of federal oversight of intermodal opportunities here in the US.
To recap, I believe Mr. Carmichael is correct in his assessment that multimodal optimization is lacking in the US, but his lack of comment regarding the structure of the US rail system and how it has inhibited said multimodalism leads me to believe he is in favor of direct subsidies to the Class I’s rather than legislative restructuring of the US rail system to make it more compatible with multimodal opportunities.
Whether that restructuring requires OA, forced trackage rights over captive rail territory, new competitive capacity construction, or reregulation I’ll leave to others to decide.
Also, keep in mind his comments regarding the energy sector is an aside, and not the gist of his comments.
I think the key issue is one I mislearned like a good little parrot in school early on. My brother in law insists that school is essentially rote memorization and the major flaw is that they never taught critical thinking…This may seem unrelated but I think it is relevant. They were always stressing the competitive nature of evolution and “how things work” and by inference made the leap that it applies to we two legged vertibrates as well…by “kill or be killed” or “the law of the jungle.” When I became curious about this I discovered that in reality this is not so. Co-operation and competition are really two sides of the same coin. So could competiton progress or evolve without co-oper