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"Open Access" and regulation of railroad freight rates.
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[quote user="Murphy Siding"][quote user="futuremodal"] <P> </P> <P>This is where government oversight has failed miserably. <FONT color=#ff0000> It would have been better to fix the problems of the loser railroad</FONT> and thus keep the competitive balance, rather than "saving" the railroads by merging them into bigger and bigger monopoly sectors. Because let's face it - a railroad being poorly run isn't necessarily a function of that railroad being a lesser property in comparison to others. Case in point - NYC/Pennsylvania vs N&W/Chessie/et al.</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P> Say what? *Fix* the loser railroad? Reward a railroad that is getting beaten by the competition, so it make *compete* with the stronger competitor? Did you have to read <EM>Hairrison Bergeron</EM> in high school.[:O]</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>I have no idea what that last sentence is doing in this forum.</P> <P>That said, say you have three quasi-competitive parallel railroads. One is the worst of the lot but has massive land grants to fall back on. One got it's start with land grants, but needed to merge with the first one to survive. The third has the best alignment but had no land grants - it either needs retroactive land grants (e.g. equal footing) to survive as an independent, or it either is merged and/or abandoned. </P> <P>Now you are the federal government, charged by your constituents to maintain both <STRONG>railroad health</STRONG> <EM>and </EM><STRONG>intramodal competitiveness</STRONG>. What do you do? Do you:</P> <P>1. Let the one with arguably the best alignment but worst financial standing fail while the other two merge, thus guaranteeing financial health of the sole remaining merged railroad but eliminating all hope of intramodal competition?</P> <P>2. Provide a form of federal aid to the at risk railroad equivalent to the land grants it's merged competitor inherited, thus guaranteeing health to both railroads (but of course lesser health to the merged line than if they had sole control of the territory) and some intramodal competition</P> <P>3. Make all three railroads merge, then break them up into two new and improved competitors (e.g. now both will have access to all major rail markets and the best routings).</P> <P>4. Take the worst of the three (the one with the massive land grants at hand), divvy it up between the two better lines (aka akin to Conrail being divvied up to NS and CSX) including dividing up the unsold land grants to allow supplemental financial health for the remainders?</P> <P>5. Nationalize the whole lot?</P> <P>6. ___________________?</P>
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