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[quote user="tiskilwa"][quote user="bobwilcox"]To quote gabe  "But, what changes hit the rail industry from the 1960s to the 1970s to make things go so horribly wrong?" Do you have an opinion you would like to share with the list?[/quote]No changes hit the rail industry in 1960; rather, it was the status quo that hit the rail industry around 1960. [The following quote is from, A History of the ICC, Hoogenboom,  pp. 159-160] “[In December, 1960] John P. Doyle, staff director of the Transportation Study Group (created earlier by the Senate) submitted his draft report to the Senate Committee on Interstate and foreign Commerce. … Regulatory policy, the Doyle report concluded, ‘has produced a general program of preserving the status quo which is in direct opposition to the overall objective of a dynamic transportation system which can best serve the economy and defense of the country.’  Predicting that the nation was headed for a transportation crisis, the report cited … the absolute decline in railroad traffic and revenue from 1956 to 1959.  Railroads suffered, the report continued, from the great technological developments in competing modes; from enormous public investment in highways, airports, and waterways at a time when railroads had difficulty raising private capital; … and common carriers were subject to ‘inequitable and destructive ICC regulation.’ ”   [/quote]Put another way, regulation held railroads in place while the world moved out from under them.The fundamental change to which railroads were made helpless by regulation to adapt was technological in origin, the development of practical autos and trucks circa 1910.  These became vastly more economical on a total-cost basis for small-volume, short-to-medium-length movements following the decision by the public to finance the construction of roads through the public treasury and the decision by the public to not tax highway users on either a cost-of-use or value-of-use basis, only a loose fuel-consumption basis which greatly underpriced the value of the highway to trucking, and made fixed plant almost entirely a variable cost.Blaming the ICC is superficial.  The ICC did what Congress told it to do, who did what the voters told it to do.  There was no independent thought on the part of either the ICC or Congress for which I am thankful.S. Hadid
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