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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by Overmod</i> <br /><br />Dave: <br /> <br />Much of what you're speculating about has been discussed -- in some respects, to death -- under the title of "open access". One place you might start is by reading up on some of the work done by John Kneiling (the old Trains Magazine "Professional Iconoclast") who proposed that trackwork be considered as an 'iron ocean' over which trains would navigate following mutually accepted conventions and rules. It is interesting to speculate on the ways that privately-owned ROW might be converted to allow this kind of practice, as the situation with railroad track occupancy is very different from what prevails on our nation's interstates with respect to vehicle safety, capacity, etc. <br /> <br />When you've worked out some ways this might be done -- and checked with Google, etc., to flesh out your ideas with some facts and details -- start thinking about potential problems and opportunities. Then go back over the posts on this forum that concern "open access" and see how the arguments and discussions there affect your ways of looking at the issue. <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />If you can somehow get a copy of TRAINS from July of 1973, you can find an excellent John Kneiling column regarding the separation of infrastructure ownership from rail transporter services. He explores three options in terms of his preferences: 1) a series of small investor owned transport companies, 2) a series of investor owned toll railroads, and 3) government ownership of railroad right of ways. As is the case somtimes with Kneiling's writing style, it is hard to ascertain the specifics of his plan (e.g. I can see no difference between options 1 and 2 above), but he does make the point that if a railroad transporter happens to fail under this separation scenario, it does not mean the track will get torn up too, which is what happens now under the proprietary closed access system. The phrase "open access" does not occur in Kneiling's column, at least from the 1970's. <br /> <br />To recap from the other threads, separation of rail infrastructure from rail transporter services would take care of some serious problems: 1) It would eliminate the unfairness of the captive rail shipper, 2) It would allow more rail transporters to enter the transportation services market e.g. opens the field of railroading to more, not less, competition, 3) It would help aleviate the U.S. trade deficit, since many of the U.S. exporters are captive shippers, while no U.S. importer is captive to any rail system, 4) Operating the U.S. rail system as regulated infrastructure companies and/or under government ownership would virtually eliminate the concept of deferred maintenance e.g. there would be no robbing the maintenance budget to "sex up" the balance sheet for Wall Street speculators or to procur expenditures on non maintenance capital, 5) Right now railroad companies try to eliminate capacity until lines are saturated with traffic in order to be able to turn away business and thus boost profit margins, then and only then do they consider adding capacity. Under a separation regime, the incentive of the infrastructure companies would be to constantly add capacity in order to expand the customer base (the customer base in this case being the transporter companies) e.g. instead of improving the bottom line through monopolistic practices, they would instead improve the bottom line by increasing volumes. <br /> <br />Best of all, a separation of rail infrastructure from rail transporter services would be a move toward "equalization" of rail infrastructure construction and operations with the infrastructure of other modes, and by doing so will begin to eliminate the skewing of the transportation market that current runs in favor of truckers and barge lines. Railroads once moved 70% of the goods in this country, and that can only happen again under the separation scenario. Conversely, you can bet the farm that under the current system railroading will never again capture over 50% of the transporation market.
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