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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe . (2) In terms of public common tax fund investment, you raise a valid issue. However, I think there are three premises underlying your assertions that are not completely accurate. First, in terms of affecting corporate decision making, common fund investment into industry rarely if ever is implemented to reward—or not implemented to punish—PAST actions of the industry. It is more pragmatic than that and is given to coerce the FUTURE conduct of that industry. Rail lines have a duty to their investors; I fail to see why they should be punished for abandoning a line to utilize that profit. If railroads were public servants, no one bothered to tell them or me. Gabe [/quote] Gabe, all of the arguments you offer are good ones. As far as indiana being "most overbuilt",..well it's not a point wirth arguing over, you may in fact be right about Iowa....but I seem to recall someone here once admonishing my concerns over abandonments by saying Indiana was the most overbuilt and I was just going with their "expertise"... But since that point is really only secondary lets go with "one of the most overbuilt"...would that make you happier? doesn't bother me. As far as whether the railroads are asking for it or not, I couldn't say for sure, but just from conveniant recalI, I think that Mark H thumped war drums in his columns a couple different times calling for such a public involvement to allieviate maxed out capacity, and I think it was either Don Phillips or Larry Kaufman who wrote similarly at least once. Maybe they were just writing "rah! rah! rah!" style commentary to please the readership,...but when weighed in context with strategic abandonments,.. absolutely made my flesh crawl... Maybe I simply took them too seriously? I copied a portion of your original reply above, the portion that I thought was especially well founded... And I won't argue any point, because each point you make is entirely valid.. I'm just of a cynical mind that that the taxpayer owes no bonus to a corporations stockholders, either. If there are 2 railroads between city A and city B, both single track with various sidings along the way...and adequate capacity (through the wonders of competition) and then railroad #1 aquires #2, absorbs it's business then anti competitively pulls up the rail from #2 and sells it for scrap......only to go belleyaching to the gov't that they now need "relief" because they are strangled for capacity.....I think the gov't would be doing a disservice to the taxpayer by helping Railroad #1 double up it's original line to relieve the bottleneck that the railroad brought upon itself. {key point: sure, railroad #1 can operate a dual track railroad with a greater efficiency via economy of scale, than it can operate 2 seperate single lines, but why should it be the responsibility of the taxpayer to FACILITATE that part of the merger for the railroads stockholders?} Unfortunately, my cynic nature is such that i suspect that if such a scenario ever did arise, the best interest of the stockholders would prevail over the best interest of the taxpayer. And therein lies the source of my frustration
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