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[quote user="ROBERT WILLISON"] You hit one major hot spot on the head. Taxes. A large reason why railroads reduced or eliminated capacity, main lines and terminals. [/quote] Taxes are a factor in business decisions, especially if the company's price/demand curve is highly elastic, which means that it cannot pass the tax burden on to its customers without running them off to a competitor. In 2012 - latest verified numbers - the Class 1s paid $960 million in property taxes.  It sounds like a lot of money.  However, when looked at as a percentage of revenues, tons loaded, ton miles, etc., the picture changes dramatically. In 2012 the average revenue per carload for the Class 1s was $2,390. The average property tax burden per carload was $33.84.  Or 1.42 per cent of revenue!  The average property tax burden per ton loaded was 55 cents, and the average property tax burden per ton mile was .00056. Corporations don't pay taxes.  They pass them through to the customer in the pricing mechanism, unless they are faced with the highly elastic price/demand curve mentioned above, which is unusual.    Given the relatively small amount of property taxes paid by the nation's Class 1s, I doubt that many decisions on how to ship, i.e. rail, truck, water, etc., turn on the property taxes paid by the nation's railroads.
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