And what about motorists that approach an unlighted railroad crossing at night with our headlights turned off? What about us, huh?
Posted on 03/09/2005 5:50:05 PM PST by tahiti
In the 1990's, officials worried that motorists couldn't see approaching trains well enough and mandated installation of "ditch lights" on most locomotives. Now, the concern is that drivers can't see the middle of trains. The Federal Railroad Administration has ordered railroads to attach white or yellow reflective materials to the sides of locomotives and freight cars.
The reflective-material regulation is intended to make railroad equipment more visible at highway crossings. Almost one-quarter of grade-crossing accidents occurs because motorist ram the sides of moving trains, according to the FRA.
Roughly 20% of the country's freight-car fleet is already equipped with reflective materials, says the Association of American Railroads, adding that railroads will have to shell out about $90 million to bring the remaining equipment up to the new standard, which took effect March 4. Locomotives must carry reflective materials by 2010, and freight cars by 2015.
Amendment V
"nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 98—963
JEREMIAH W. (JAY) NIXON, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MISSOURI, et al., PETITIONERS v. SHRINK MISSOURI GOVERNMENT PAC et al.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[January 24, 2000]
Justice Stevens, concurring.
"therefore, I make one simple point. Money is property;"
The regulation is obviously unconstitutional unless the taxpayers fund the regulation has compensation for taking private property for public use.
And what about motorists that approach an unlighted railroad crossing at night with our headlights turned off? What about us, huh?
Strobes would be cheaper and more reliable.
Railroads have been among the most heavily-regulated industries in the history of the United States (for a number of reasons), which explains why an agency like the Federal Railroad Administration even exists in the first place.
Ask yourself, in what part of the constitution does the "power" to regulate the railroad, or for that matter, any other business, emanate from?
Most would say Art I, Sec 8, Cl 3, the "commerce clause."
Even accepting that "conventional wisdom" that this clause does grant the power to Congress to "regulate" a private business (how did a "foreign nation", on of the "several states" or an "Indian tribe" become a private business?, the power still cannot be used to violate the Bill of Rights.
For example, by the "conventional wisdom" interpretation of the commerce clause, Congress can regulate the business of printing a newspaper.
But the Bill of Rights, Amendment I, specifically prohibits the regulation of the content of the newspaper.
The same constitutional principle applies to use of Congressional power when the taking of private property for public use comes into play.
If any notion is "specious" (having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious) it is the "private railroad crosses a public roadway" contention.
Free people adhere to the convenants of the constitution because if we do not then we have nothing more the a tyrannical democracy.
Which explains why the business of railroading is barely fiancially sound.
Why track right of ways are abandoned monthly and turned into bike and walking baths.
Why we have become some dependent on foreign oil to move goods via truck versus railroad.
The list can go on and on how the unconstitutional governmental regulation of private business has nearly destroyed it.
The same thing is happening the airlines.
The unconstitutional governmental mandate requiring the airlines to fund the the installaton x-ray machines in baggage handling areas, taking their property for public use without just compenssation, is nearly bankrupting the industry. (US Air and United Airlines are on the financial ropes)
Let the railroad industry compensate the Federal government for the services rendered by the U.S. Army in the latter half of the 19th century (i.e., chasing the Indians all over the Great Plains). Then we'll sit around and pontificate about the virtues of private enterprise and the limits of Federal power under the U.S. Constitution.
Railroads have an additional burden that most of these other industries don't have to deal with, and that is the enormous cost of maintaining their fixed assets (railroad lines, rolling stock, etc.). And yet despite all this, railroads are actually in better financial shape today than they have been in decades.
Why track right of ways are abandoned monthly and turned into bike and walking baths.
The abandonment of rights-of-way is not a function of declining railroad business. In fact, railroad activity as measured by railcar loadings has reached record levels in recent years. What's happening is that the railroads are consolidating their operations, closing down lightly-used lines, and running more traffic than ever but on fewer miles of track. Many of these lightly-used lines simply didn't serve any real purpose anymore. Northern New Jersey is a good example . . . many of the rail lines in that region were built to serve a market in which large volumes of coal were being moved from mines in Pennsylvania to destinations in the New York City region (it wasn't all that long ago that homes were heated by coal-fired furnaces in the basement). As coal was replaced by heating oil and natural gas over the years, the need for these rail lines disappeared.
Why we have become some dependent on foreign oil to move goods via truck versus railroad.
This is another myth. Railroads have not lost business to the trucking industry. Both industries are moving record amounts of freight today, and both of them are constrained by limitations on their capacity (lack of terminal capacity for railroads, and a shortage of qualified drivers for the trucking industry). In recent years, what we have seen is both industries orient themselves toward those types of shipments that is best suited for them. Railroads are better at moving large quantities of a product over long distances, and at moving very heavy bulk loads over short distances between specific origins and destinations (coal from a mine to a power plant, chemicals from a petrochemical plant to another manufacturing facilitu, etc.). Trucks are better suited for moving smaller quantities of finished product for final distribution, and for moving time-sensitive loads over long distances.
It's worth noting that the original Federal highway system was constructed in the 1920s specifically to provide an alternative mode of competition for shippers in the U.S. The reason for this was that the railroads often had a very harmful impact on the economy of the nation (which was why they were regulated in the first place). If you go back through the latter half of the 19th century, you'll find that most of the severe economic downturns were caused by some kind of problem in the railroad industry. A strike by workers on the Pennsylvania Railroad, for example, could bring the entire nation to a standstill, as grain from the Plains, manufactured products from the Midwest, and passengers all over the Northeast could not reach their final destinations.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/regrev/evaluate/809222.html
Explain why the railroad industry shouldn't have a similar safety device, when they don't even have side marker lights at relatively close spacing like trucks do. I live a few blocks from a rail line that's often active at night and I know of several crossings on that line which just have a crossbar sign. Spotting dark freight cars at those crossings is very difficult even in good conditions.
True, and the railroads should return all land to the descendents of its former owners on now defunct lines. Of course that won't happen, as the state steps in and turns the land into "rails to trails" biking trails.
Afer re-reading my post, I can understand your response to my post.
What I did not make clear is that government mandated "regulations" cost money to implement.
The 5th amendment states,
"nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
In the Supreme Court decision of 2000, Nixon v. Shrink, Justice Stevens stated,
"I make one simple. Money is property."
Without some kind of "compensation" mechanism being included with the laws authorizing such regulations for the public use of "safety," then such regulations take money from private property owners for the public use without compensation and thus are unconstitutional.
If the citizens want "safety," the citizens are going to have to pay for it directly with their taxes.
"The Court said that requiring money to be spent to comply with a safety regulation is not an unconstitutional taking of property, even if the amount of money exceeded the value of the property. The Court said that a property owner 'has no property right to be exempt from fire safety laws.'"
This quote is describing the outcome of Third & Catalina Associates v. City of Phoenix, apparently a case dealing with a building which was to be updated to a more recent fire code but it would have cost more than the building's worth to remove the asbestos used originally. It seems fairly comparable to me -- with these train cars (and also the trucks I mentioned earlier) the government (rightly or wrongly) is expecting businesses to spend money without compensation to bring their property up to an expected level of compliance with regulations.
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