Replies

American companies are more likely to reinvest their profits into the railway system

Hahaha. The Fed Gov has allowed far too much consolidation of the railway companies, and in the great tradition of American corporations, with no competition they have slashed work forces and maintenance because customers have no choice but to accept the delays and prices charged and safety and maintenance are of little concern.

It's the same with airlines, banks, gas and electric companies: they all provide high costs, high risks and zero customer service with the approval of the government.

Delays are not really a concern. Of that 84% of U.S. rail that is devoted to freight cargo, most of it is bulk commodities, with cost-per-mile taking precedence over speed of delivery.

If what you are shipping falls into the just-in-time shipping mode, ship with trucks. If you’re shipping coal or wheat, etc, load it onto freight trains. It will get there eventually, and at comparatively lower cost.

The Fed Gov has allowed far too much consolidation of the railway companies, and in the great tradition of American corporations,

Yes, and in passenger rail, Fed.gov have created a TOTAL monopoly - run by Fed.gov!

Its why it sucks so much.

Hahaha. The Fed Gov has allowed far too much consolidation of the railway companies, and in the great tradition of American corporations, with no competition they have slashed work forces and maintenance because customers have no choice but to accept the delays and prices charged and safety and maintenance are of little concern.

The Federal government didn't "allow" this consolidation as much as it just let history run its inevitable course. The consolidation of the railroad industry in the post-WW2 era was driven by the industry's desperation to stay solvent in a heavily regulated environment where competition from the trucking industry was growing exponentially.

This consolidation reached its zenith in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the successive bankruptcies of the six major Northeastern U.S. railroads, starting with the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1967. The collapse of the Penn Central in 1970 (which had just been created out of the merged Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads in 1968) sealed the fate of the railroad industry. By 1973-76 the Federal government had intervened and created two government-run railroads -- Amtrak (passenger) and CONRAIL (freight) out of the wreckage.

The industry was more or less back on its feet when CONRAIL became profitable by the early 1980s and privatized. The rapid consolidation in the industry since the 1980s has been done in a way that keeps competition in place as much as possible. The four major Class I railroads in the U.S. operate on two overlapping networks (CSX and Norfolk Southern in the east; Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe in the west), and the industry is far more efficient today than it has been at any time in its history.