rrandb: I think you mis-edited the quote above. It was obviously me that referenced grassy knolls and crop circles, not Dave. I was just ribbing him a bit. It’s not my fault, though, Elvis made me do it.[:-,]
There are no such “cross subidies”.
FM makes 'em up to support his political agenda. BNSF management would have to be nuts to do that. They may be wrong from time to time, but they’re not “nuts”.
There is no possible logical reason why a railroad would set up a “cross subsidy”. But FM says they do. Which pretty much means FM isn’t logical. Q.E.D.
Yeah, I make it all up. There really is no differential pricing. I just conspired with all the railroad oligarchy to contrive a percieved existence of differential pricing, and to spread that falsehood throughout the MSM and Washington politicos, so that someday my political agenda will become reality and I can rule the world! AH HA HA HA HA![}:)]. In truth, all railroad rates are really mileage based, we just pushed the differential angle to fool the stockholders into thinking we’re maximizing our monopoly power when we’re really not!
[:D]
But for the sake of trying to explain such things to Poindexter in the simplest of terms:
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STB revenue adequacy standard = 180% R/VC
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Captive US rail shippers pay well over 180% R/VC, sometimes up over 300%
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Non captive Asian importers pay well under 180% R/VC, sometimes as low as 100% R/VC
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Ergo, #2 above is cross subsidizing #3 above.
The NITL (National Industrial Transportation League) is the latest rail shipper group to come out in favor of the DM&E project![tup]