US divided by superhighway plan

A MASSIVE road four football fields wide and running from Mexico to Canada through the heartland of the United States is being proposed amid controversy over security and the damage to the environment.

The "nation's most modern roadway", proposed between Laredo in Texas and Duluth, Minnesota, along Interstate 35, would allow the US to bypass the west coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to import goods from China and the Far East into the heart of middle America via Mexico, saving both cost and time.

However, critics argue that the ten-lane road would lay a swathe of concrete on top of an already over-developed transport infrastructure and further open the border with Mexico to illegal immigrants or terrorists.

According to a weekly Conservative magazine published in the US, the US administration is "quietly yet systematically" planning the massive highway, citing as a benefit that it would negate the power of two unions, the Longshoremen and Teamsters.

Another source claimed the highway was a "bi-partisan effort" with support from both Republicans and Democrats that would reduce freight transport times across the nation by days.

Under the plan - believed to be an extension of a strategic transportation plan signed in March last year by the US president, George Bush, Paul Martin, the then prime minister of Canada, and Vincente Fox, the Mexican president - imported goods would pass a border "road bump" in the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, before being loaded on to lorries for a straight run to a major hub, or "SmartPort", in Kansas, Oklahoma.

Border guards and customs officers would check the electronic security tags of lorries and their holds at a £1.6 million facility being built in Kansas City, before sending them on to the road network that links the US cities of Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit with Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver across the Canadian border.

Following the release of a 4,000-page environmental study, construction of the first leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor is reportedly due to begin next year, backed by US state and governmental agencies and a Spanish private sector company, Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte.

Tiffany Melvin, the executive director of Nasco, a non-profit organisation which has received £1.4 million from the US Department of Transport to study the proposal, said: "We're working on developing the existing system; these highways were developed in the 1950s and we have number of different programmes we're working on to provide alternative fuels and improve safety and security issues.

"We get comments that we are working to bring in terrorists and drug dealers, but this is simply not true.

"This is a bi-partisan effort that will ultimately improve our transportation infrastructure.

"Trade with China is increasing greatly, and the costs of our transportation system are ultimately born by the consumer.

"We do offer links to Canada and Mexico, but we are working on the trade competitiveness of America. We are planning for the future."

Eric Olson, the transportation spokesmen for the California-based Sierra Club, a national environmental awareness organisation, said the road would cause significant damage.

"There is a great need for fixing our existing roads and bridges. That needs to be a priority before we start building new massive road projects."

You didn't read the article you yourself posted. Indeed, that author supports my arguments.

Rail freight has gone through marvelous improvements over the last thirty years. It's come a long way. It had to. It was near dead half a century ago, with its share of national freight dropping from 60% in 1950 to under 30% by 1980, and going to near 0% for passenger transport. Rail will never again be our primary national mover -- unless we kill off our highways, intentionally or not, and unless we start laying railroad tracks all over the country, at which point everyone will be complaining about rights-of-way takings being given to private railroads. (In the land grants of the 19th century, the railroad industry was by far the largest recipient of public concessions ever.)

Just as rail brought about in the 19th century, the economic gains brought by the motor vehicle in the 20th century are incalculable. Those gains cannot possibly be sustained, much less repeated, by our current rail system -- or our current highway system. That rail carriers are scrambling to figure out how to move more goods on existing lines is proof alone that, whatever the "efficiency" within the system, its overall capability has hit a wall. It's like getting a few extra horses out of an engine. Rail cannot, will not, and should not be a fall back for highways.

That article you cite by McCullough says the exact same thing. You might have spared us all the statistics and just shown us the article's introduction and conclusion (highlights mine):

[From the introduction]

The focus of U.S. transportation policy in the 19th and 20th centuries was on extending the benefits of transportation to more locales and to more citizens. The focus of policy in the 21st century must also be on reducing the costs of transportation. Current transportation costs associated with safety, congestion, sprawl, and pollution are large. Future costs associated with scarcity of petroleum could be cataclysmic.

The railroad network is a national asset that could be used to reduce the costs of transportation. This paper has two aims consistent with that possibility. The first is to describe the efficiency improvements that the railroad industry itself has made in the past few decades. The second is to describe the role that rail network could play in a more efficient overall national transportation system.
...
IV. Conclusions
We still lack the data necessary to define the proper role of rail passenger service in the U.S., but it is clear that freight railroads have an allocative efficiency advantage in various markets. Though freight railroads have made significant gains in productive efficiency, rail freight is still one of the slowest growing modes of transportation in the U.S. Figure 8, based on National Transportation Statistics from BTS, shows that since 1980 rail freight vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) has actually grown less rapidly than highway freight VMT or even rail passenger VMT.

So the author and I agree: while rail freight has made fantastic gains in internal efficiency, as a matter of proportional overall economic contribution the system is showing no gains. I disagree with him, however, that overland transport cannot be improved. It can and must be.

Below is how rail stands as compared to trucking in usage. While from 1997, the trends since then are the same. And again, we're ignoring passenger transport altogether, something that private rail has entirely abandoned:

Table 1-51: Growth of Freight Activity in the United States: Comparison of the 1993 and 1997 Commodity Flow Surveys

Edited: see full chart here

Mode of transportation	Value			Tons			Ton-miles
Mode of transportation	1993 (billion $ 1997)	1997 (billion $ 1997)	Percent change	1993 (millions)	1997 (millions)	Percent change	1993 (billions)	1997 (billions)	Percent change
TOTAL all modes	6,360.8	6,944.0	9.2	9,688.5	11,089.7	14.5	2,420.9	2,661.4	9.9
Truck^a	4,791.0	4,981.5	4.0	6,385.9	7,700.7	20.6	869.5	1,023.5	17.7
Rail	269.2	319.6	18.7	1,544.1	1,549.8	0.4	942.6	1,022.5	8.5

I don't know how you get around McCullough's introductory statement that the purpose of his study is,

to describe the role that rail network could play in a more efficient overall national transportation system.

As for your dismissal of the articles I cited, I'll do some of your homework for you. Here, from the Norfolk-Southern piece:

Norfolk's logistics--involving the use of algorithms that search for the shortest routes, fastest tracks and fewest handlings--essentially got the trains to run on time. Remarkably, that hoary concept had been ignored by the industry until Norfolk made it a priority. Just a few Norfolk advances: Carload volume is up 14% since 2000, but the number of cars needed to move that volume has dropped 11%. Average speed is up 7% to 22 miles per hour. Average time in the yard, called dwell time, is down 7% to 23 hours.

Indeed, Norfolk's system is so far ahead of other railroads' that it sells its software to rivals. The ultimate competition, after all, is trucks. All of this has made Norfolk's recent performance recall the Jay Gould era: Its revenues grew 17% during the most recent four quarters (through September 2005) to $8.2 billion. Profits have grown 66%, from $700 million to $1.2 billion. Norfolk Southern's discipline gives it the best net margins of the U.S. railroads. Its 14% bests Burlington Northern's 12%, CSX's 11% and Union Pacific's 6%. The company's share price is up 85% since the beginning of 2004.

There's always room for improvement, especially in rail. The efficiencies that McCullough cites are in physical plant and labor. Norfolk-Southern has, in addition to those, gone at that horribly lacking area of the rail industry in dispatch, which presents an inherent disadvantage to rail over trucking. But, finally, rail can only do so much when it comes to meeting that balance between mass and individual shipment priority. It's like asking buses to get people to their homes better than cars. The only way to accomplish it would be to degrade the automobile routes, for the bus routes could never reach those met by automobiles.

As the Forbes article notes, rail's efficiency gains have been in desperation at the flogging rail has taken from trucking:

Norfolk, like the rest of the railroad industry, spent a half-century in a siege mentality, slouching along by shrinking and slashing costs, tangled in rat's-nest mergers and wrestling with its featherbedding unions. In 1955 a million people worked for the big U.S. railroads; now just 160,000 do (29,000 at Norfolk). Yet while productivity boomed--ton-miles moved per employee have increased to 11 million from just 600,000 in 1955--the industry was unable to raise prices from 1980 to 2004. It suffered from overcapacity and bad service, and the newly deregulated trucking industry was siphoning customers. It was rare when a large railroad earned even its cost of capital.

And we haven't even gotten into the larger historical problem with rail, which is of a similar issue that highways face today, government regulation. Rail was reinvented in the 1980s by Reagan's deregulation. Trucking, too, only trucking now faces the additional burden of government ownership of the land it runs on, which rail does not. The government long ago ceded that land to the railroads. It can do the same for highways now.

The trucking industry is adamant against tolling and direct user-fees. In opposing it, it is condemning itself to congestion, higher taxes, and a degraded road system. If the railroad industry wants to take market share from trucking, it can do no better than to wish for more of the same from the highway system. The worst scenario for rail is highway innovation.

As for your core problem with the Texas road that it may be "facilitating still more imports of goods..." I can only wonder how you process the fact that rail feeds the import frenzy as much as trucking. I'm also amazed by the notion that greater domestic "production of goods" would be somehow benefit from a decrepit highway system. You need to distinguish better between your hysterias.

One last thing: When I called your post no. 174 childish it was a statement of fact. You wrote, "B'wahahahahahahaha! TOTALLY BOGUS B.S." Then you call me a "cheap-shot provocateuer" and say I'm throwing "insult bombs" because I wrote that your post was childish?

That's pathetic. You, my friend, are the excitable one around here, not I.

I don't know how you get around McCullough's introductory statement that the purpose of his study is,

That's relatively easy when he says: " to describe the role that rail network could play in a more efficient overall national transportation system. "

This does not mean that he diagnoses the Rail networks and industry as inefficient...but points to the RR networks as the component that can make the "overall national transportation system" "more efficient."

This is not linguistically a close call. This is straightforward and undeniable plain meaning of Gerard's study.

I have no issue with the idea that "There's always room for improvement, especially in rail."

But it still does not justify your earlier claim that disparaged Rail. Not by a longshot.

Who is against efficiency? Not me. I am against a system which subsidizes imports over domestic production. And it sounds like we agree that the trucking industry is in fact a beneficiary of public subsidy by free use of the roads. So we don't need more of either you're saying?

I'm also amazed by the notion that greater domestic "production of goods" would be somehow benefit from a decrepit highway system.

Your ideas don't comport with what I advocate, and your intellectual confusion is palpable. You are ignoring the greater economic utility to the transportation system by a more balanced flow. To eliminate the gross waste of dead-heading which you completely omit in your attempts. And a large increase in domestic production of goods would also simultaneously reduce import demand by satisfying it internally. Less unbalanced and wasteful stress on the system.

You need to distinguish better between your hysterias.

That seems to be your problem.

One last thing: When I called your post no. 174 childish it was a statement of fact.

No. It was a statement of OPINION which you brazenly insist is fact. And it's an "out there" opinion at that.

You wrote, "B'wahahahahahahaha! TOTALLY BOGUS B.S."

Yes, one of the finer features of Free Republic is bringing down the haughty self-important to the level of us poor benighted plebians.

Then you call me a "cheap-shot provocateuer" and say I'm throwing "insult bombs" because I wrote that your post was childish?

You never supported your position...and all your articles still fail to support your position...as you say "there is always rooms for improvement." You fail to make a case for the extremist position of the Rail networks being dead. If you note, your own Norfolk story indicates there is an overcapacity problem. Not a deficiency. Not congestion. None of that. I was entitled to amusement at the mischaracterization, and was right to condemn the argument you made. I didn't condemn you personally. That is what you did. Ad hominem attacks, insults, and still no support for an extreme position. That's pathetic. You, my friend, are the excitable one around here, not I

You are ignoring the greater economic utility to the transportation system by a more balanced flow. To eliminate the gross waste of dead-heading which you completely omit in your attempts.

This is nonsense. First of all, a "more balanced flow" means more centralization and less flexibility and speed, which are the cores problems with rail. Second, dead-heading isn't contained to trucking. It's an issue for all shipping, and always has been. Rail's solution is to consolidate -- which means delays. Customers gladly pay a premium for speed and flexibility in trucking, so dead-heading is built into truck pricing. Otherwise, for shippers dead-heading represents opportunity. There were times I have made more money on shipping than on product through open return routes -- on any mode, rail, ocean, air, or road. Btw, measured by merchandise value, trucking has a greater balance of movement to/from Mexico than rail, which has only half as much value on inflows as outflows (see here). There are good reasons for this, but it betrays your notion that rail creates a "more balanced flow."

Then you wrote,

And a large increase in domestic production of goods would also simultaneously reduce import demand by satisfying it internally. Less unbalanced and wasteful stress on the system.

Talk about palpable. And as for this, you again read an article incorrectly:

If you note, your own Norfolk story indicates there is an overcapacity problem. Not a deficiency. Not congestion. None of that. I was entitled to amusement at the mischaracterization, and was right to condemn the argument you made.

The mischaracterization is yours. The article does not say that there exists overcapicity. It states that there was such a problem previous to deregulation. Unfortunately, rail recovered from the old regulatory regime not by filling the empty glass but by trading it for a smaller one. Following deregulation the industry dumped half its track mileage. Much of this trackage was redundant, but it has led to severe limits on growth and, worse, on competition. Rail's gains have been recovery, not growth. All the efficiencies McCoullough points to are internal. Overall, rail revenues have been stagnant, with nominal increases only in the last two years. In 1987, rail GDP was $32 billion and trucking $82.5b. In 2004, rail was $50b and trucking $225. Those are not happy numbers for rail, and it's not a happy situation for the national transit system. As one observer told Congress:

What has been rational and profitable from a railroad shareholder viewpoint, has also resulted in a downscaling of America's overall rail network. (From testimony before the House Committee On Transportation And Infrastructure On The U.S. Rail Capacity Shortage

Government regs, price regimes, and labor rules near killed the railroad, and did kill private interstate passenger rail. Since deregulation what the rail freight industry has done to improve is impressive, but it's insufficient and falls far short of where it should be to compete effectively with highway transit. Norfolk Southern's innovations in dispatch should have come years ago, but even with it the industry is incapable of moving goods the way the economy demands. Here again from the House of Representatives:

A second method of overcoming the physical limitations of existing or improved infrastructure is to expand its throughput capacity “virtually” through the use of more efficient signal systems and other technologies that allow smaller and more frequent operating windows on the route for each train. (From Subcommittee on Railroads Hearing on The U.S. Rail Capacity Crunch

This shouldn't even be at issue. So, yes, there's a serious need for improvement -- and for far more efficiency. Just ask one of the industry's own biggest clients, UPS:

Allow me to give you an example of how our system interacts with that of the railroads. A national hair products manufacturer uses UPS for its’ nationwide shipping needs. Their Southern California distribution location supplies products to much of their West Coast retail beauty salon customers. UPS uses the rail network to feed these packages to UPS hub locations in the Pacific Northwest. This customer has had repeated service problems and delays in this region and recently stated, “Taking a week into Oregon and Washington (from California) simply does not work. Other carriers get to these locations in 2 days via truck. At this rate, we might be forced to make changes. Certainly I see excuses, but no solution being suggested by UPS.”

Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common on today’s rail network. When our customer confronts us with this feedback, we are left with few alternatives. UPS wants the railroads to succeed and to continue our mutually rewarding transportation partnership. But the bleak current service picture forces us to be responsive to our customers’ needs and find an alternative transportation mode. Our marketplace dictates a quick and appropriate response. Along the same vein, we wish the railroads had the ability, and desire, to respond to our needs. (From Testimony to Before the Subcommittee on Railroads Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure U.S. House of Representatives April 26, 2006 ** note: .pdf file!)

If rail can compete, so be it, but it should never come at the expense of our highway system.

The UPS testimony is revealing and worth a full read. I'll leave you with one other excerpt from it:

Whether as a result of 1990’s rail mergers or other reasons, there has been little new rail capacity. Regrettably, the railroads have been unable to make adequate capital investments, technological enhancements and innovative solutions in responding to new market conditions. I stress the word adequate. It’s not as if the railroads have not been investing – as you will hear today from industry representatives. Rail performance clearly underscores, however, that it simply has not been enough. Spot investment – a few miles of track here, fixing a bottleneck there – will not make our rail system more efficient and the national economy will suffer for it. As an aside, the proposed Railroad Infrastructure Tax Incentive legislation is NOT sufficient. We need to devise a more comprehensive solution.

Nothing illustrates the current challenges we face more than time in transit, which remains a significant issue for railroad customers like UPS. Since the passage of the Staggers Act, the efficiency and speed of our nation’s transportation system generally has increased. The lone exception, however, is railroad velocity. I’d ask you to consider what other mode of transportation in the United States moves slower than it did 30 years ago? And demands on an already overburdened rail network are increasing.

Am at the college and I can't link to . . . wait . . . It' son Jocko's thread . . .
- - - - - -

I think Steve, below, says many good exhortive things. I don't think he solves the problem or challenges of earnest, genuine Christian brothers and sisters doing their best to hear correctly; thinking they do; and then something seemingly contrary happens.

I have no doubt that this fellow is NOT a false prophet. And, Steve knows him and seems to assert the same thing. I don't have much patience for all those sooooooooo eager to throw the first stone when they haven't had a truly prophetic experience in their lives. And they certainly haven't typically demonstrated a flawless record of hearing and obeying the still small voice of The Lord. Yet they are quite eager and 'at-the-ready' with 6 buckets of stones. Their arguments and sternness and supposedly more lofty [self-]righteousness don't impress me.

So, for me, I'll continue to pay most attention to the top 2-5% of the genuine Christian prophetic sources out of many seemingly good available and wait and see what and how and how long it takes God to confirm whatevere it is He's going to confirm; to mature whichever prophetically gifted folks He's going to mature etc.

It is important to hear right and speak right.

I don't have a lot of answers. I know God is real. I know prophecy is for our era. I know many earnest, decent, honorable, true children of God with prophetic giftings and offices. I don't know anyone who's flawless. Neither do I know anyone who's had 40 years on the back side of the desert being purified exclusively.

I know God has declared He is going to have a tried people. I know He's determined to work humility and Love into His Body as well as true, Spirit-born unity. How we get there from here has to be another one of His pending miracles.

Thanks for asking. Here's the post from:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1651112/posts?page=30#30

- - - - - - - -

To all: When I got home from work today, someone had forwarded an email to me put out by Steve Shultz, via THE ELIJAH LIST [ www.elijahlist.com ] refuting the subject of this thread, the Willamette Vally Warning. Excerpted below, it is helpful for those of us attempting to in good faith sort through dreams, visions, and prophecies.

jm

+* +* +* +* +* +* +*

The summary of the two dreams circulating were this: This Messianic Christian (who I consider to be a brother in the Lord), received a dream in which on a given day, an evil parade was held in Portland, Oregon. Then he saw buildings collapse, the dam break, and a tsunami hit, which destroyed most of the Willamette Valley. He concluded that since the parade was evil, and the parade was on the 18th of June this year (though that date was not in the dream), this must be the date of inevitable destruction of most of Portland, and continuing down into the Salem area, etc. He further concluded that since he keeps the entire Torah including the Torah Sabbath, then those reading his word should do two things:

a) Be prepared with a full tank of gas in their car on the 18th of June.

b) Be sure they were attending a Torah-keeping Church.

There was no call to pray against the earthquake or catastrophe. No call to pray for repentance.

But there was an "assumption" or one might say, a "inference" that since he kept Torah, so should everyone else. So again, he says all the readers should: 1) keep Torah and 2) have a full tank of gas in their car on June 18th.

Please note that the dream or revelation never said there would be an earthquake on June 18th (though later he got a word that meant "18" in a second dream). And there was certainly no call IN THE DREAM to begin to keep more laws from the Old Covenant--specifically the entire Torah in order to be safe--though that suggestion was implied in the revelation as it was written.

As a result, we are getting many inquiries about this word. It's circulating all over the Willamette Valley where we are located.

Meanwhile....

I have friends who are ministering every week, under the bridges of Portland, to people caught in this same sin this man saw in the dream. They are putting "feet" to the Gospel, and seeing salvations. Rather than fearing that God is about to wipe out Portland, these friends are doing something about the sins seen there, and those caught in this sin. And they are praying for the safety of this area.

The entire Northwest and the West Coast is admittedly overdue for an over-the-top earthquake, volcanic eruptions, and tsunami's galore. Who would or could deny this?

But What Should You Do?

Will you repent and stand in the gap instead? Will you call out to God for mercy?

Many interpret a dream as a "done deal" when all God is wanting to do, is to say something like this, "Unless you repent, the day is coming....the time when one day, sudden destruction is possible because of this sin in this area. So I'm looking for a man or woman, or a Church, a city, or a people to stand in the gap so that judgment of destruction will not be required." (This is not a Scripture but a paraphrased idea of what God is saying through many prophetic revelations that He is giving to many people in many denominations.)

As the Church, we should not have the mentality that IF every doctrine is 100% accurate, and the car is full of gas, then we are in pretty good shape.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with some preparation in case a disaster ever happens to our area. Preparation is good. Fear is not. And yet, the thought process that suggests that, "Since I hold a better set of doctrines than the next person, I will be safer" --this is simply not Biblical. Sometimes, those with the best Theology and the Holiest of lives, suffer the most persecution and are attacked by the enemy.

Rather, we should always pray and always be "repented- up," and we should understand the Blood of Jesus, be ministering to all those around us, standing in the gap in prayer, and yes, living Holy lives.

A Very Common Set of Missteps in the Prophetic

With what has been circulating in the last week or so, all three of the above guidelines are being accidentally (and innocently I'm sure) forgotten.

These are good guidelines for which prophetic words to listen to and obey:

1) It is not normally only one person who will be given a judgment word by the Lord for a region. Rather, God would normally give it to many prophets and prophetic people from various denominations in the region--and many prophetic people will agree on the word.

2) A Call to pray and repent should always be urged to stop the judgment. Otherwise, we might as well be as Jonah was found to be--simply expecting a wicked city to be destroyed while he remained safe.

3) Biblically, you are not more protected because every law or doctrine is kept, or because you hold a more accurate set of doctrines, or even if you keep a certain day more holy than another person keeps it. Instead, most often (but not always) protection comes for those who live Holy Lives and who trust God, according to Psalm 91.

Psalm 91:1-3

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Surely He will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence." NIV

Steve Shultz
THE ELIJAH LIST
www.elijahlist.com

This is nonsense. First of all, a "more balanced flow" means more centralization and less flexibility

No, that is conjecture.

... and speed

Again. And speed is often not a driving factor, albeit it is the primary trait emphasized by trucking.

... which are the cores problems with rail.

Second, dead-heading isn't contained to trucking.

Never said it was.

It's an issue for all shipping, and always has been.

Finally you get one right.

Rail's solution is to consolidate -- which means delays.

True, but the unit train is not the only innovation.

Customers gladly pay a premium for speed and flexibility in trucking, so dead-heading is built into truck pricing.

Yes. Inefficient. I don't know how "glad" they are to do so.

Otherwise, for shippers dead-heading represents opportunity. There were times I have made more money on shipping than on product through open return routes -- on any mode, rail, ocean, air, or road. Btw, measured by merchandise value trucking has a greater balance of movement to/from Mexico than rail, which has only half as much value on inflows as outflows (see here)

Interesting.

Very interesting claim. Because we used to have a $10 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Now we have a $40 billion annual trade deficit. Somehow your claims don't add up. Because trucking cargo usually (almost always) represents Goods, as opposed to bulk commodity. And when NAFTA went into force in '93 the trade in goods obviously changed dramatically and have continued to be deleterious for the U.S. since.

There are good reasons for this, but it betrays your notion that rail creates a "more balanced flow."

I never claimed that Rail was what created the more balanced flow, but a less-import dependent economy. I did point to a smarter economic policy, that puts an end to the differential subsidy for importing, as opposed to punishing domestic production with onerous income, capital gains, and payroll taxes. Your synergistic "opportunities" would greatly magnify under the strategic tax policy advocated.

Then you wrote, And a large increase in domestic production of goods would also simultaneously reduce import demand by satisfying it internally. Less unbalanced and wasteful stress on the system. Talk about palpable. And as for this, you again read an article incorrectly: If you note, your own Norfolk story indicates there is an overcapacity problem. Not a deficiency. Not congestion. None of that. I was entitled to amusement at the mischaracterization, and was right to condemn the argument you made. The mischaracterization is yours.

False. Still yours.

The article does not say that there exists overcapicity.

Nor does it say there is currently undercapacity.

It states that there was such a problem previous to deregulation. Unfortunately, rail recovered from the old regulatory regime not by filling the empty glass but by trading it for a smaller one. Following deregulation the industry dumped half its track mileage. Much of this trackage was redundant, but it has led to severe limits on growth and, worse, on competition.

In isolated cases that you fail to support with your article. Again you are trying to make your evidence say something it doesn't. So you finally adduce the hearings, which do purport to make such claims. You can probably find something anywhere which says almost anything, but not in the same piece. And this didn't. As you further embellish with still more historiography of your own, and then finally find insert the self-serving testimony from some shippers at a House Hearing:

Rail's gains have been recovery, not growth. All the efficiencies McCoullough points to are internal. Overall, rail revenues have been stagnant, with nominal increases only in the last two years. In 1987, rail GDP was $32 billion and trucking $82.5b. In 2004, rail was $50b and trucking $225. Those are not happy numbers for rail, and it's not a happy situation for the national transit system. As one observer told Congress:
What has been rational and profitable from a railroad shareholder viewpoint, has also resulted in a downscaling of America's overall rail network. (From testimony before the House Committee On Transportation And Infrastructure On The U.S. Rail Capacity Shortage Government regs, price regimes, and labor rules near killed the railroad, and did kill private interstate passenger rail. Since deregulation what the rail freight industry has done to improve is impressive, but it's insufficient and falls far short of where it should be to compete effectively with highway transit. Norfolk Southern's innovations in dispatch should have come years ago, but even with it the industry is incapable of moving goods the way the economy demands. Here again from the House of Representatives: A second method of overcoming the physical limitations of existing or improved infrastructure is to expand its throughput capacity “virtually” through the use of more efficient signal systems and other technologies that allow smaller and more frequent operating windows on the route for each train. (From Subcommittee on Railroads Hearing on The U.S. Rail Capacity Crunch This shouldn't even be at issue. So, yes, there's a serious need for improvement -- and for far more efficiency.

Again you opine.

Just ask one of the industry's own biggest clients, UPS: Allow me to give you an example of how our system interacts with that of the railroads. A national hair products manufacturer uses UPS for its’ nationwide shipping needs. Their Southern California distribution location supplies products to much of their West Coast retail beauty salon customers. UPS uses the rail network to feed these packages to UPS hub locations in the Pacific Northwest. This customer has had repeated service problems and delays in this region and recently stated, “Taking a week into Oregon and Washington (from California) simply does not work. Other carriers get to these locations in 2 days via truck. At this rate, we might be forced to make changes. Certainly I see excuses, but no solution being suggested by UPS.” Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common on today’s rail network. When our customer confronts us with this feedback, we are left with few alternatives. UPS wants the railroads to succeed and to continue our mutually rewarding transportation partnership. But the bleak current service picture forces us to be responsive to our customers’ needs and find an alternative transportation mode. Our marketplace dictates a quick and appropriate response. Along the same vein, we wish the railroads had the ability, and desire, to respond to our needs. (From Testimony to Before the Subcommittee on Railroads Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure U.S. House of Representatives April 26, 2006 ** note: .pdf file!)

Sounds like a gripe that is going to be answered with the efforts of the Union Pacific. Note: The problems cited are caused by the strength of the economic recovery and the undue and excessive growth of imports, coupled by staffing problems stemming from a large number of retirements. There are also equipment shortages. The Union Pacific is moving ahead with hiring and with the procurement of 700 additional locomotives. Track construction is proceeding in certain bottleneck areas, and the railroad is also considering double-tracking a large portion of the entire Sunset Route (LA to El Paso) at a cost of about $1.5 billion. Pretty snazzy the way free enterprise works. Unlike your Texas Super Corridor...government hand-outs from the get-go.

If rail can compete, so be it, but it should never come at the expense of our highway system.

Huh? Like since when?

The UPS testimony is revealing and worth a full read. I'll leave you with one other excerpt from it: Whether as a result of 1990’s rail mergers or other reasons, there has been little new rail capacity. Regrettably, the railroads have been unable to make adequate capital investments, technological enhancements and innovative solutions in responding to new market conditions. I stress the word adequate. It’s not as if the railroads have not been investing – as you will hear today from industry representatives. Rail performance clearly underscores, however, that it simply has not been enough. Spot investment – a few miles of track here, fixing a bottleneck there – will not make our rail system more efficient and the national economy will suffer for it. As an aside, the proposed Railroad Infrastructure Tax Incentive legislation is NOT sufficient. We need to devise a more comprehensive solution. Nothing illustrates the current challenges we face more than time in transit, which remains a significant issue for railroad customers like UPS. Since the passage of the Staggers Act, the efficiency and speed of our nation’s transportation system generally has increased. The lone exception, however, is railroad velocity. I’d ask you to consider what other mode of transportation in the United States moves slower than it did 30 years ago? And demands on an already overburdened rail network are increasing.

See above. Answered.

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