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Greyhounds - Keep in mind those assumptions posted regarding societal benefits and natural monopolies are Bitzan's, not mine. On the societal benefit question, most people recognize that rail shippers represent a larger segment of society than railroads, so if you have significant reductions in the prices rail shippers pay for rail service, in aggregate society benefits, even if railroads ostensibly do not. Did C&NW's/UP's entry into BNSF's PRB domain greatly complicate things, or was it a minor complication? Either way, it is a subjective judgement, a judgement that could be objectified if real-world comparison numbers could be had regarding multi-use vs single use of the Orin line. I agree new entrants to a rail line should pay as they go in a manner that covers fixed costs up front using an established track usage formula, with apportionment of variable costs dependent on post-use analysis. Pre-emptive maintenance beats deferred maintenance hands down. It can be argued that the system is indeed broke until all modes have their natural share of the transportation market, and until U.S. exporters are as uncaptive as U.S. importers. The fact that railroading still only has about 35% of the market and 15% of the revenues should be a red flag to any transportation analyst that the technology known as railroading is underutilized in this nation. The fact that we still have a large trade deficit even with a devalued dollar is evidence that the existence of captive rail shippers is the third greatest reason behind the deficit, with imported oil and the Chinese currency manipulation being reasons number 1 and 2 respectively. Creating a rail system that engenders head to head market based competition would have a positive impact on two of the three major trade deficit causal factors: It would shift much of the freight transportation market from low fuel economy trucks to high fuel economy trains (reducing consumption of imported oil), and it would give U.S. manufacturers and producers a more level playing field with imported goods.
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