divebardave zugmann From the linked propaganda: "Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure." Todays hands off no regulation enviroment allows our company to buy back its stock and delay infatructure improvements for up too 100 years or more in order to skim off the top and reinvest our profits in other industries that are far more sexier then railroads.
zugmann From the linked propaganda: "Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure."
From the linked propaganda:
"Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure."
Todays hands off no regulation enviroment allows our company to buy back its stock and delay infatructure improvements for up too 100 years or more in order to skim off the top and reinvest our profits in other industries that are far more sexier then railroads.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
NKP guy The Wealth of Nations...a book everybody likes to cite but almost no one has actually read. Flintlock76 Smith says (in so many words) that if you're in business, and you foul-up big-time you deserve all the trouble you get? And don't expect others to pull your fat out of the fire like it's a right? Obviously Smith never met a modern American big businessman. They believe that one socializes the costs, but privatizes the profits. How many businessmen have been jailed and disgraced for their role in the 2008 Depression?
The Wealth of Nations...a book everybody likes to cite but almost no one has actually read.
Flintlock76 Smith says (in so many words) that if you're in business, and you foul-up big-time you deserve all the trouble you get? And don't expect others to pull your fat out of the fire like it's a right?
Obviously Smith never met a modern American big businessman. They believe that one socializes the costs, but privatizes the profits.
How many businessmen have been jailed and disgraced for their role in the 2008 Depression?
And the CEO gets a $35mil going-away present after a major failure.
NKP
Sadly, few or none. Happy New Year.
CSSHEGEWISCH The comment about real estate taxes is interesting. New Jersey was long known for its steep real estate taxes applied to railroad property within the state and this sitaution was considered one of the reasons that CNJ was perpetually in poor financial shape.
The comment about real estate taxes is interesting. New Jersey was long known for its steep real estate taxes applied to railroad property within the state and this sitaution was considered one of the reasons that CNJ was perpetually in poor financial shape.
I don't know if NY is as bad as NJ (it might be), but I have heard that RE taxes were the reason some lines were pulled up in the sixties.
It is kind of a rock/hard place situation, though. The railroads feel any amount of RE tax is too high, and the municipalities see a large corporation that can "certainly" afford to pay them.
Unlike the rest of us, though, the railroads don't get much for their money. You and I benefit directly from roads, etc. The railroads benefit only peripherally from any of that.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Self policing has rarely worked in ANY endeavor--that is why we have the alphabet soup attempting to restrain the predators. Other than full nationalisation (which I would support) if the class ones don't want even open access, then they need to perform better. I do NOT mean another ratio point target, I mean on time or early delivery, better service than truckers, just better service all around. Coal allowed most of them to make money despite lousy service because trucking coal to huge electric generating plants wasn't an option. That cushion is going away. The shameful gridlock through Chicago is inexcusable.; yet CN is creating another delay inducing bottleneck on the St Charles Air Line. If I wereTsar, single tracked former mainlines (by my definition doubletrack is the minimum) should have punitive RE taxes levied to wake up the bean counters. (ethical statement--I am a small owner of equities in 2 of the big 7)
zardoz the Clown-In-Chief, complete with the orange clown make-up.
Compared to the wicked witch and her band of flying monkeys, I'm not so sure we got the bad end of the bargain.
zugmannI'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running.
I suppose the moral of the story is, if you don't step out of the "bubble" from time to time and look at the big picture, that is, how what you're doing and the policies you're adopting are affecting the world around you, in this case your customers, the blind, heavy hand of government is waiting in the wings to make you take notice.
It's always preferable for an industry, any industry, to self-police, for lack of a better term, considering that those involved have the best understanding of what their particular industry is all about. Unfortunately in the real world things don't happen that way very often.
I can think of one industry that's always done a great job of self-policing, but it ain't railroading.
Re-regulation is bound to happen. Everybody wants it because it is the only way to force the hand of management. And everybody agrees that management is destroying the industry by looting it for the investors. That is the view of the unions, the employees, the shippers, and the entire interested culture. They all want more regulation. Certainly, the regulators are in support of regulation.
Something has to change. All the railroads are having service problems on a more frequent basis with the adoption of so-called "PSR".
I don't think true re-regulation is the answer (see Jeff's post above), but that is what the railroads will get if they don't smarten up. And then everyone will lose, except for the truckers.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Flintlock76 zugmann jeffhergert I'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running. Spoken by one in the trenches with the bullets and shrapnel flying around.
zugmann jeffhergert I'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running.
jeffhergert
I'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running.
Spoken by one in the trenches with the bullets and shrapnel flying around.
Spoken by two in the trenches with bullets and shrapnel flying around.
Flintlock76 zugmann jeffhergert Does anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days? I'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running. Spoken by one in the trenches with the bullets and shrapnel flying around.
zugmann jeffhergert Does anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days? I'd rather that than this clown show we currently have running.
jeffhergert Does anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days?
I believe it was a Trains item, IIRC about the time of the Milwaukee Road's final bankruptcy, where they said the problems of the Northeast had reached Tucumcari and Puget Sound. Much of the industry was in trouble, some on life support. The healthy ones were also in danger and they knew it. Some like SP, weren't as healthy as they seemed to be.
PreStaggers, it was doubtful the industry could survive in private hands. Many, including some of the healthy railroads, were expecting some form of nationalization. (Enough that some were setting up separate corporate entities to shield their non-railroad holdings from being nationalized.)
I don't like the current way the major carriers do business either. It's a business strategy to benefit the few short term, while hurting the many long term. But that strategy afflicts most, if not all, of large American business.
But do we really want to go back to having railroads in the physical and financial conditions of the Penn Central, Rock Island, Milwaukee Road, and many others?
Jeff
jeffhergertDoes anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days?
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
I think many are missing the point of that statement. It's referring to how things have been since Staggers took effect as opposed to how things were before. Does anybody really want to go back to the preStaggers days?
I think the addition to the original statement by Overmod is also valid. I'm afraid that the short sighted focus to appease the short term investors at the expense of everyone else will eventually cause some kind of reregulation. Whether it be a form of open access or direct rate control, it will not benefit the industry long term. About the only good willl be with the cash cow slaughtered, those short term investors will dump and run to other industries and companies. Unfortunately, all investors may also leave.
Overmod zugmann From the linked propaganda: "Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure." Unsurprising their editors left out the end of the sentence; it should have read: "Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure, then divert that revenue directly to investor profit before wasting it that way."
Unsurprising their editors left out the end of the sentence; it should have read:
"Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure, then divert that revenue directly to investor profit before wasting it that way."
Right on!!
OOOOO, Mod-man, that's COLD!
True, but COLD!
zugmannFrom the linked propaganda: "Today's market-based, balanced regulatory framework allows freight railroads to operate like other private businesses and to earn enough revenue to make massive, necessary investments into maintaining and expanding their infrastructure."
Euclid I would expect that shippers always feel that more government oversight is necessary.
I would expect that shippers always feel that more government oversight is necessary.
Emblematic of todays obscuring buzzword bovine excrement
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
The STB is also rethinking on how it determines cost of capital. This is used to determine revenue adequecy, whether the railroads are making enough to operate and maintain their infrastructure.
https://www.railwayage.com/freight/stbs-cost-of-capital-dilemma/
Euclid Overmod The fact of these hearings reflects the perceived political pressure by shippers who feel that 'recent changes' in railroad operations are of such impact that renewed Government oversight is necessary. I would expect that shippers always feel that more government oversight is necessary. They always feel that railroads hold an unfair advantage where there is no competition to hold rates down. So shippers may feel that PSR heightens the continuos threat to shippers, and so it is time to push back; or they may just see leverage for their ongoing cause by blaming PSR because it is in the news as being a big revolution in favor of railroad management. I have a feeling that much of that the loud shipper protest over PSR was just that.
Overmod The fact of these hearings reflects the perceived political pressure by shippers who feel that 'recent changes' in railroad operations are of such impact that renewed Government oversight is necessary.
I would expect that shippers always feel that more government oversight is necessary. They always feel that railroads hold an unfair advantage where there is no competition to hold rates down.
So shippers may feel that PSR heightens the continuos threat to shippers, and so it is time to push back; or they may just see leverage for their ongoing cause by blaming PSR because it is in the news as being a big revolution in favor of railroad management. I have a feeling that much of that the loud shipper protest over PSR was just that.
And by the same token - many of those complaining rail customers have a service and price monoply on their own customers - they are upset that they can't force the carriers to provide service at the customers desired price point of next to nothing.
We need to look no further back than the period between WW II and the enactment of Stagger to see what a under compensatory rate structure that was difficult to change wrought upon the rail industry.
OvermodThe fact of these hearings reflects the perceived political pressure by shippers who feel that 'recent changes' in railroad operations are of such impact that renewed Government oversight is necessary.
Thanks, Jeff.
The fact of these hearings reflects the perceived political pressure by shippers who feel that 'recent changes' in railroad operations are of such impact that renewed Government oversight is necessary. While these changes are not all attributable to some interpretation of PSR or other, I think most of them are, and both the shipper and Government perception appears to be that this revolution in operations model is a major reason.
I expect Trains will have at least one person covering these hearings as they happen, and that Brian or someone like him will post the findings here as a link to the Newswire.
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