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"Railroads can't maintain pace of coal demand"

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[quote user="Datafever"]  In point of fact, I highly suspect that futuremodal is correct in his assertion that triopolies tend more toward fully competitive pricing than duopolies do.  But more to the point, are there particular industries where this is more likely to be so, or conversely, are there industries that are relatively resistant to "price war" pricing regardless of the number of competitors? [/quote]Data,I feel I should go back a few steps and let you know where this triopoly = social benefit idea comes from.As most folks on this forum know, I favor open access as the optimal way to achieve the highest social benefit from the railroad genre.  Under open access, you have one entity controlling the tracks (either a government, a public-private consortium, or a private entity under the auspices of utility regulation) and any number of entities providing the transporter services depending on willingness to engage.However, sans OA and maintaining the integrated model, in my view the next best thing is to have at least 3 railroads in most every major terminal or freight producing area.  Triopoly seems to provide the minimum amount of competition to keep consumer pricing at a "doable" limit, while probably being the practical limit to overbuilding.In some places, two railroads seem to provide the right balance between consumer pricing and infrastructural optimization.  I would expect that in some situations modal competition from barges (including truck/barge combo moves) provides a similar outcome as three land locked railroads.
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