What does a Republican majority mean for our railroads?

The results of the 2016 election will, no doubt, bring sweeping change to the culture and economy of the United States. Two week afters the election is too early to make substantive predictions for the next four years, but many observers of and participants in the railroad business wonder what a Republican sweep of the Presidency and both houses of Congress might mean for the industry.  
When it comes to railroads, many of the the campaign promises and policy platforms traditionally proposed by Republican legislatures are thrown into conflict. On one hand, many members of the party have promised to restore our infrastructure and revitalize the economy by repatriating manufacturing jobs that have been lost overseas, particularly in the nation’s flagging coal regions. President-Elect Trump has called for investing in infrastructure, and has pledged to return offshore manufacturing jobs within his first 100 days in office. Considering that freight railroads move the most basic building blocks of our nation, like coal to keep the power plants operating and chemicals to keep the water drinkable--there is little doubt that they qualify at least in part as "infrastructure."

Reviving the manufacturing sector and infrastructure within the span of one presidential term though, will take money--$1 trillion over ten years, according to Trump’s plan.Freeing up that much money would conflict with the Republican party’s goal of lowering taxes and reducing federal spending--making good on that promise would mean withholding funds from railroad projects and other infrastructure programs.  
Allocating public funds for passenger rail tends to be a particularly irksome point to the right. For many, Amtrak is almost a shorthand term for wasteful government spending: The enterprise, they say, ought to be privatized and left to wither or grow according to its merits.

Some of Amtrak’s long-distance routes might stand to be reexamined, and the feasibility of bringing passengers onto trains should certainly be examined,  but for many densely areas of our country, investing in better commuter rail and intercity rail is essential to restoring the infrastructure and staging resources for a population that is projected to continue growth in the future. This is the daily reality back home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area: Roads are already congested, and in many areas have reached  a place where they physically cannot grow to include any more capacity. Some of the politicians thrown around for the Trump candidate do seem to appreciate this. One possible candidate for the Secretary of Transportation, Utah Speaker of the House Greg Hughes, has been a vocal proponent of public transportation and did not shy away from allocating funds to support the expansion of Utah’s public transportation system, but his are a minority view among other incoming and incumbent members of the new government.  

Other right-leaning politicians may argue that it is regulations enforced upon the industry that holds back growth, rather than funding.  Some of them may indeed force railroad companies to alter their practices--PTC and Tier 4 regulations have both prompted widespread equipment upgrades-- but rolling back regulations isn’t likely to translate into a positive change for the business community within a single presidential term, and do little to move funding towards project that are desperately needed but lacking in capital.

Any serious attempts to restore the country's infrastructure will require robust funding, and must factor in the need for expanded passenger rail capacity  to truly serve the future needs of our nation.  The next few years will reveal how  much effort the Republican government will put into making good on all of its campaign promises. Any serious effort to restore the infrastructure, though, will include both freight and passenger rail.