Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
General Discussion
»
BNSF boss says transport system nearing crisis

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol It's an old argument: "cutting their way to prosperity." Never did work. Blame Wall Street, but for most of this period, railroads weren't raising funds by selling stock. Brock Adams -- a Congressman turned bureaucrat -- started this talk about "ratilonalization.". Then it became a carrot to receive 4R funding, notwithstanding Warren Magnuson's [Chairman, Senate ICC Committee] thundering retort that it wasn't the place of DOT and the FRA to set national rail policy by setting capacity standards. Congress meant to help all the railroads, under the theory that the ICC, and ultimately Congress, bore a good share of the blame for the predicament facing railroads in 1976. Well, the bureaucrats got there way, so effectively that three years after 4R, something like only 6% of funds allocated had been distributed. A big help for what Congress had determined was a national rail "crisis." An entire industry was held hostage to a bureaucrat's idea of how the industry should be organized. The bureaucrats got their way. And all the industry sycophants bobbed their heads up and down and said, yup, excess capacity, "THAT'S the problem" because Brock Adams required them to say so as a condition for receiving federal funds. The only railroader that ever made sense at the time was Tom Lamphier, president at BN: "Excess capacity is necessary, even desireable, in a competitive rail environment." Words you don't hear from self-aggrandizing managements along the way. The problem was never excess capacity; it was the lack of a reasonable rate of return at any level. Best regards, Michael Sol [/quote] Michael, Whatever happened to Tom Lamphier? He sounds like someone who actually had the logical perception missing from this current crop of rail industry advocates. As a life long Northwesterner, I agree with you regarding Brock Adams. What a disaster he turned out to be.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag