henry6 RWM: I think that UP, NS, CSX, and others did a lot to curry favor with the Bush administration but not the public. As for lack of going to the public, the record stands for itself: it is still an out of sight, out of mind issue for the public surprised that there is a train blocking the crossing or blowing its horn all of a sudden when they hadn't seen or heard a train in years; or when there is a bad derailment with injuries, death, and fire and property damage. The AAR used to curry public opinion but as there became fewer Class I's the less importance was placed on PR and more on mechianical and government issues. As far as the public not caring about passenger rail, that is a wrong assumption, htguy, Ask anyone served by passenger service...even commuter services the likes of MNRR-ConDot, LIRR, NJT, and SEPTA....and they'll tell you it is important to them. But you are right if you are referring to communites and regions where there are no passenger trains. The American public is maleable, pliable, receptive, and even gullible. With the right marketing and advertising campaign you can tell them and sell them. With tongue part in cheek I list some of the top marketing projects of the last half of the 20th Century as: the NFL, the World Wrestling Federation, Madonna, the oil reliance and highway system, Vanna White, and rock and roll. None of them would exist to the great extent they do if they weren't carefully crafted, controlled, and marketed. Pepole can be pursuaded: that is why advertising and marketing are lucrative and successful ventures; but they have to be practiced with vigor and consistancy.
RWM: I think that UP, NS, CSX, and others did a lot to curry favor with the Bush administration but not the public. As for lack of going to the public, the record stands for itself: it is still an out of sight, out of mind issue for the public surprised that there is a train blocking the crossing or blowing its horn all of a sudden when they hadn't seen or heard a train in years; or when there is a bad derailment with injuries, death, and fire and property damage. The AAR used to curry public opinion but as there became fewer Class I's the less importance was placed on PR and more on mechianical and government issues.
As far as the public not caring about passenger rail, that is a wrong assumption, htguy, Ask anyone served by passenger service...even commuter services the likes of MNRR-ConDot, LIRR, NJT, and SEPTA....and they'll tell you it is important to them. But you are right if you are referring to communites and regions where there are no passenger trains.
The American public is maleable, pliable, receptive, and even gullible. With the right marketing and advertising campaign you can tell them and sell them. With tongue part in cheek I list some of the top marketing projects of the last half of the 20th Century as: the NFL, the World Wrestling Federation, Madonna, the oil reliance and highway system, Vanna White, and rock and roll. None of them would exist to the great extent they do if they weren't carefully crafted, controlled, and marketed. Pepole can be pursuaded: that is why advertising and marketing are lucrative and successful ventures; but they have to be practiced with vigor and consistancy.
There may be something in what you have to say. But you are telling the wrong person (me). Decisions like that are made above my pay grade. If you want to effect change, start with formal proposals to railway decision-makers. That's what I do. I have always found the senior people to be receptive to proposals backed by serious research, demonstrated expertise, and demonstrated results. I'd be tickled to see you succeed.
RWM
Railway Man Railways believe that the long-term best interest of the U.S. public is served by having an efficient, high-capacity, freight and passenger, multimodal transportation system, that can move harmoniously along with structural changes in technology, the economy, and public goals and ideals, and deliver results that expand the economic output, safety, environmental stewardship, and standard of living of the U.S. Railways seek to explain their inherent strengths to policymakers and policy leaders, to enable them to make informed choices. Railways spend their resources of time and money wisely to efficiently deliver their message to the people that are most likely to listen to it and most likely to react to it. Railways do spend some money on experimental or new public outreach projects (such as mine!) but historically the results have been mixed at best. If you believe that all that obsesses railway leaders is next year's financials, and if that is not to your liking, then I suggest you take your complaint to the investing public that demands it. We don't work for ourselves, we work for our stockholders. They tell us what to do, and we do it. In reality, most railway men at my level are true believers, and while we must serve our masters, we also freely choose to work hours far in excess of what we are paid to work, at stress levels that lead to our early deaths, because we want to make sure the public gets a better deal than it would get if all we were interested in is self-gratification as measured by the paycheck and the ability to hire personal servants and push them around like many of our peers in industries that are structurally enabled by the public to skim off vast profits from transaction fees, patents, copyrights, and other legalized cartels. We get our self-gratification from our occasional success at delivering the results I described in my first paragraph above. RWM
Railways believe that the long-term best interest of the U.S. public is served by having an efficient, high-capacity, freight and passenger, multimodal transportation system, that can move harmoniously along with structural changes in technology, the economy, and public goals and ideals, and deliver results that expand the economic output, safety, environmental stewardship, and standard of living of the U.S. Railways seek to explain their inherent strengths to policymakers and policy leaders, to enable them to make informed choices. Railways spend their resources of time and money wisely to efficiently deliver their message to the people that are most likely to listen to it and most likely to react to it. Railways do spend some money on experimental or new public outreach projects (such as mine!) but historically the results have been mixed at best.
If you believe that all that obsesses railway leaders is next year's financials, and if that is not to your liking, then I suggest you take your complaint to the investing public that demands it. We don't work for ourselves, we work for our stockholders. They tell us what to do, and we do it. In reality, most railway men at my level are true believers, and while we must serve our masters, we also freely choose to work hours far in excess of what we are paid to work, at stress levels that lead to our early deaths, because we want to make sure the public gets a better deal than it would get if all we were interested in is self-gratification as measured by the paycheck and the ability to hire personal servants and push them around like many of our peers in industries that are structurally enabled by the public to skim off vast profits from transaction fees, patents, copyrights, and other legalized cartels. We get our self-gratification from our occasional success at delivering the results I described in my first paragraph above.
Thanks RWM. Do you have a set of criteria you use to evaluate how successful your efforts are? For example, do you peridoically survey opinion leaders or decision makers to see if the approach you are using is having the desired outcomes?
I would really be interested, if you can share it, in what two or three specific items you would most like to see as a result of your work. A couple of examples might be preventing re-regulation of the industry, or obtaining favorable tax treatment of certain investments (perhaps more efficient locomotives or other capital investments). You have described what the goals of the industry are, can you share the actions that are involved in trying to acheive these goals?
I apologize if I offended you with my statement regarding the short term focus of upper management. I have been involved in situations where long term benefits were sacrificed in order to make the numbers for the next quarter and know how frustrating that can be. I know that this is driven by stockholders and don't mean to criticize all the employees of an organization by any means.
Your description of the work ethic of many people involved in the industry matches my own experience in the utility industry. There are innumerable hard working, good people who put in long hours and dedicate their lives to providing good service and economical rates to those who are customers.
Jim
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htgguy Thanks RWM. Do you have a set of criteria you use to evaluate how successful your efforts are? For example, do you peridoically survey opinion leaders or decision makers to see if the approach you are using is having the desired outcomes? I would really be interested, if you can share it, in what two or three specific items you would most like to see as a result of your work. A couple of examples might be preventing re-regulation of the industry, or obtaining favorable tax treatment of certain investments (perhaps more efficient locomotives or other capital investments). You have described what the goals of the industry are, can you share the actions that are involved in trying to acheive these goals? I apologize if I offended you with my statement regarding the short term focus of upper management. I have been involved in situations where long term benefits were sacrificed in order to make the numbers for the next quarter and know how frustrating that can be. I know that this is driven by stockholders and don't mean to criticize all the employees of an organization by any means. Your description of the work ethic of many people involved in the industry matches my own experience in the utility industry. There are innumerable hard working, good people who put in long hours and dedicate their lives to providing good service and economical rates to those who are customers. Jim
There are some metrics that some people like to use to measure government affairs results, such as as surveys. In my opinion this is quite naive, if not a falsehood, as it has no scientific basis, as it implies there is a direct cause-effect relationship between the government affairs effort and the policy result, e.g., X input = Y % change in output. For one, there are thousands of confounding, uncontrolled variables in any one of these outcomes, no known elasticity relationships, and sample sizes too small (usually sample = 1) to determine if the outcome was related to the input, or just to sheer random chance. Scoring this is like nailing jello to a tree. You will never quite know if the result that occurs had anything to do you with your efforts. I prefer to use a more graphic metric -- whether or not I have a job. If my bosses perceive I am not getting as good a result as someone else could get, I am quite certain I will be fired promptly. Now there's a survey result for you.
I think I cannot share with you specific outcomes I am seeking or projects that I am working on. (Quite a few of them are actually discussed by someone else somewhere in this forum to my bemusement.) That would lead to that "getting fired" part. What I can share with you is that the railway industry is not seeking anything except what it perceives to be in the best long-term interest of the public, given what we perceive to be the public's long-term values and goals, based on the assumption that when railways are used for purposes at which they deliver high productivity, that the public benefits.
For example, the industry is actively campaigning against a proposal endorsed by NITL and others to increase the highway truck weight limit, as the outcome of that will be to increase the cost of highway maintenance, air emissions, highway congestion, highway accidents, trade deficit financing, vulnerability to oil supply disruptions, and health care costs, and reduce the economic competitiveness of the U.S. and the gross national product of the U.S., as compared to not changing the highway weight limit and not transferring freight off railways to trucks. (A secondary argument is made that this is necessary because of limited capacity on railways, which is made by people who are either ignorant of transportation economics or disengenous.) I have a high level of confidence in the economic calculations that lead to that cost-benefit conclusion.
To follow up on the quarterly-financials driven management question, I am always under pressure to do my part in delivering profits for this quarter, this year, next year, etc. However, no one has ever asked me to do something illegal, unethical, unwise, to help meet the goal. Some of what I do has some long lead times before any results can be delivered, and while indeed I am asked sharply and frequently if a given project is really going to deliver results that justify the investment, I have always been backed so long as I was willing to take responsibility for failure and, so long as I stated I had good confidence in the chance of success. While it is true that sometimes projects had to be postponed in order to make next quarter's results, my takeaway from the discussion has always been that the pain of the consequences of not making next quarter's results would be much worse than the pain of deferring the project; that is, we could internalize the project-deferral pain and devise technical workarounds to mitigate it, but we could not internalize the loss of investor confidence pain, we could not mitigate it, and in the long run it would hammer us worse. I've never viewed the owners as an adversary, but rather just as an impersonal force, not unlike gravity.
As an aside, I've dealt with a lot of people in the coal-burning, electron-generating business, and I have always found them a pleasure to work with. We might disagree strongly on rates and service, but I can understand and empathize with their goals, their restrictions (particularly PUCs), and imperatives, and they are not unlike ours.
Railway Man That was not my point at all -- I apologize for not being clear. My point is that the interests of the public and the railways have always been divergent. All the public has ever wanted is cheap, convenient, safe, passenger travel, and a bigger paycheck. How that was to be delivered was not the public's concern. Railways could spend their entire profit on PR to the public and it would not change anything. Railways haven't kept their story away from the public: the public is willfully deaf to it. RWM
That was not my point at all -- I apologize for not being clear. My point is that the interests of the public and the railways have always been divergent. All the public has ever wanted is cheap, convenient, safe, passenger travel, and a bigger paycheck. How that was to be delivered was not the public's concern. Railways could spend their entire profit on PR to the public and it would not change anything. Railways haven't kept their story away from the public: the public is willfully deaf to it.
The interests of "The Public" and the interest of the railways have never been, and are not now, “always divergent”.
First, the railways operate in a competitive free market environment, or as close an approximation thereof as the dang government will allow. To even survive in such an environment they have to provide services that people want to buy at a price people will pay. This means the railways have to align their interests with the interests of their customers. That’s certainly not “divergence”.
There’s always a buyer/seller conflict in a market. That’s a good thing. The buyer wants more for what he pays. The seller wants more pay for what he provides. This “friction” keeps everybody on their toes since each entity knows the other guy is looking for a better alternative. But this friction is certainly not a “divergence of interests” The closer the railways can align their services and prices to the interests of their customers the better it is for the railways, and also for the “public”.
Second, there is no such thing as “The Public Interest”. We good folks are not in any way a homogeneous monolith. What’s in your best interest may be bad for me. What is in my best interest may be bad for you. Do you have more access to and influence with the political class? If so, you may force your interests on me and falsely claim it’s “In the Public Interest.” That’s happened a lot in railroading.
A great example is the cessation of passenger service by the railroads. The railroads operated reasonably good passenger service. But people, mail and express got off the trains as rapidly as they could when better alternatives became available. Then the railroads were forced to continue to pour money down a hole by providing passenger service because “It was in the Public Interest”. No, it wasn’t. It was in the interest of some politically connected few. It was harmful to most because it wasted resources.
“The Public Interest” is a phony concept used by people to force their will on others. To say the railroads’ interests are in conflict with a phony concept just doesn’t make sense.
My opinion is that the railroads’ PR work is just about right. They need to highlight their advantages such as energy efficiency and the ability to reduce highway congestion. The CSX and NS commercials do this, and do it well. The UP steam program is great. It gets the railroad’s name in front of people in a favorable way. The UP’ own commercials did a great job.
The railroads have a good and truthful story to tell. They need to tell it. But while it’s only background, it gives critical context to any railroad issue. As in when a person gets stopped at a crossing and thinks: “I may have to wait a few minutes for this train to go by, but it’s doing a good thing.” Instead of, “That damned railroad.” Such everyday life experience context is critical. The railroads will loose without it.
greyhounds The interests of "The Public" and the interest of the railways have never been, and are not now, “always divergent”. First, the railways operate in a competitive free market environment, or as close an approximation thereof as the dang government will allow. To even survive in such an environment they have to provide services that people want to buy at a price people will pay. This means the railways have to align their interests with the interests of their customers. That’s certainly not “divergence”.
In your discussion, are "the public" and the "customers" of railroads one in the same, or are you referring to different groups?
Thank you.
JayPotter greyhounds The interests of "The Public" and the interest of the railways have never been, and are not now, “always divergent”. First, the railways operate in a competitive free market environment, or as close an approximation thereof as the dang government will allow. To even survive in such an environment they have to provide services that people want to buy at a price people will pay. This means the railways have to align their interests with the interests of their customers. That’s certainly not “divergence”. In your discussion, are "the public" and the "customers" of railroads one in the same, or are you referring to different groups? Thank you.
Well, "In My Discussion", there are no such things as "The Public" or "The Public Interest". So "Customers" can't be part of something that doesn't exist. We're fortunately a diverse lot with diverse interests. We're not "The Public", a homogeneous monolith with singular, narrow interests across the board.
Rail customers and potential customers are a segment of the population. They have their own interests, wants and needs. Other segments have different desires. Railroad PR attempts to explain to as many people as possible what a railroad does and why it produces benifits. Otherwise those people will be writing their congress types demanding that trains be banned from Barrington.
People understand that freight has to be moved. It's important for the rairoads to explain the benifits of moving it by rail. That provides a framework for thought (context) when someone is stopped at a railroad crossing. Without context no rational thought is possible.
If everyone had a MS in Economics (I don't either) none of this would be necessary. But economics education is greatly neglected in the USA. So we go with the CSX commercials. They're a poor substitute for real education, but we have to take what we can get.
greyhounds Railroad PR attempts to explain to as many people as possible what a railroad does and why it produces benifits. But economics education is greatly neglected in the USA. So we go with the CSX commercials. They're a poor substitute for real education, but we have to take what we can get.
Railroad PR attempts to explain to as many people as possible what a railroad does and why it produces benifits.
But economics education is greatly neglected in the USA. So we go with the CSX commercials. They're a poor substitute for real education, but we have to take what we can get.
Do you have any suggestions for ways in which CSX's PR people could do a more effective job of explaining "what a railroad does and why it produces benefits"?
You're right Jay. We have assumed here that they need it but have not assumed the role of any railroad as to why they might need public relations at this point. We have indicated that we feel, as does Mr. Fraily, that they do need it if only because the public is very much unaware of the role railroads play in their lives in realtion to other things. Further, the railroads lost that awareness when passenger trains no longer were a major part of our lives or lines were downgraded or abandoned. We cannot determine what railroads want right now, only speculate and inject our thoughts.
My personal opinion is that the Association of American Railroads has to step up to the plate if railroads expect the mass public to understand why they should get government bucks as opposed to just the highway lobby. A national approach by the AAR with local injections by railroads with their specific story. And, yes, I guess I am assuming myself here.
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Railway Man snip... I think I cannot share with you specific outcomes I am seeking or projects that I am working on. (Quite a few of them are actually discussed by someone else somewhere in this forum to my bemusement.) That would lead to that "getting fired" part. What I can share with you is that the railway industry is not seeking anything except what it perceives to be in the best long-term interest of the public, given what we perceive to be the public's long-term values and goals, based on the assumption that when railways are used for purposes at which they deliver high productivity, that the public benefits. ...snip
...snip
RWM, the bolded section above confuses me. Why is the railway industry seeking anything other than maximizing return to the shareholder? If you are saying that decisions are being made that don't put shareholder value at the top of the priority list, the shareholders shouldn't be very happy. I don't believe that any publicly traded company seeks nothing "except what it perceives to be in the best long-term interest of the public", no matter how you qualify that statement after it is made.
Is there a problem with just saying we are trying to influence decision makers in a way that will allow us to maximize shareholder value?
Jim, if we do things that are not in the public's best long-term interest, the public will do things that are not in our investors' interests. We try to take the biggest possible picture and thing long-term. Railways are not an isolated little kingdom that can do whatever they wish behind a closed door, but very much out there in the public realm, with complex and extensive interactions with the public (via their elected representatives and agencies) on virtually every action they take. Ignoring or discounting public opinion is an express train to failure.
Stepping back a minute, my observation is that few people in this forum realize how much involvement railways have with public agencies and elected representatives. It's deep, it's extensive, it's complex, and it's daily. I think even most people who work for railways, outside of engineering department and government affairs, have no idea how much the public agencies and representatives are embedded in our business. We can not legally ignore them, and we cannot get anything done without partnering with them. If I want to drive piles to repair a trestle, I might need to talk with USACE, USFWS, the SHPO, the USCG, and maybe four or five other agencies for 2 years before I think about putting a single new butt into the water. If I want to build a yard, I'd better start talking with the county, the MPO, the state, the EPA, the state DEQ, the state DOT, four or five years before I call in the yellow iron. Commuter, Amtrak, high-speed rail -- all of those are major interactions with the public, and woe be to a railway that thinks it can stonewall or ignore them, or not hold their hand and help them understand how to work with a railway. As far as the government is concerned, railways have a unique and special relationship with the public called "the franchise," and if railways want to maintain that relationship, they had better work at it.
diningcar If the obvious escapes us perhaps a visionary (yourself?) will take charge and enlighten us. What I see are a few incidents that arouse a local constituency (one, several or a special interest group) for a short period and then fade away. There seems to be no groundswell which spreads beyond a local situation; and then those seem to diminish as specific information overtakes the initial reaction. In our present (climate?) people get upset and protest or demonstrate about so many inconsequencial things and after the first few (news?) items we hear no more. I see most of it like a person in the grocery store with a few purchases who finds someone in the fifteen item minimum line with fifty items. They are upset but soon find there are more significant things in their life.
If the obvious escapes us perhaps a visionary (yourself?) will take charge and enlighten us.
What I see are a few incidents that arouse a local constituency (one, several or a special interest group) for a short period and then fade away. There seems to be no groundswell which spreads beyond a local situation; and then those seem to diminish as specific information overtakes the initial reaction.
In our present (climate?) people get upset and protest or demonstrate about so many inconsequencial things and after the first few (news?) items we hear no more. I see most of it like a person in the grocery store with a few purchases who finds someone in the fifteen item minimum line with fifty items. They are upset but soon find there are more significant things in their life.
so should I construe your position to mean that your answers to my two initial questions are:
1. No, there is no likelihood that the general public will foster hostility for the major rrs
and
2. No, the rr's need not do anything to anticipate and address this (non) possibility
that pretty much it?
Convicted One so should I construe your position to mean that your answers to my two initial questions are: 1. No, there is no likelihood that the general public will foster hostility for the major rrs and 2. No, the rr's need not do anything to anticipate and address this (non) possibility that pretty much it
that pretty much it
My observation is that there is no groundswell of hostility to railroads. There are isolated incidents that temporarily arouse someone, or a few people or a special interest group. Many of these persons because of this temporary status become interested enough to learn about railroads in-so-far as their current interest and realize they may have mistaken concepts or wrong information. In those situations railroads and governmant agencies address the need to educate. Their efforts usually dispel bad information and explain the cause of the incident. These are almost always localized situations and anger, if it ever got to that, goes away.
I think hostility is much to strong a word; it means a deep seated ill will. One that permeates and attracts a large following. I do not see that and have thus far not found examples in this forum.
Okay, I am jumping in without reading every previous post (but I did just re-read Mr. Frailey's article). The freight railroads need to take some ownership of passenger services if they want to improve their public image. Put Harry and Louise in the dining car, and let them escape to their roomette at the end of Mr. Frailey's vignette...
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Daniel Burnham
diningcar I think hostility is much to strong a word; it means a deep seated ill will. One that permeates and attracts a large following. I do not see that and have thus far not found examples in this forum.
I suppose that one's individual concept of what constitutes 'hostility" might be a factor as well.
I've often heard of politicians having to face "hostile audiences" at speech presentations, where the only measurable "hostility" is the crowd's antipathy for the politician's stated agenda.
a "shades of gray" type thing perhaps?
As has been generally agreed, apart from local occurrences there is little hostility to the railroads, just complete unawareness on the part of the public at large. But I think the railroads themselves should be taking responsibility for creating an actual positive image. They have indeed been working closely with the government, both politicians and agencies, and with some success. Their major effort will continue to be focussed, justifiably, in this area. But ultimately the politicians they have convinced need to be re-elected by the public at large. In other words, the industry needs to do its share in ensuring that wise decisions aren't aborted by short-sighted ignorance.
A nation-wide ad campaign by the AAR sounds good, but people are most influenced by something more local. Often times it is just a "feel-good" moment rather than dry facts that will cancel out the memory of that time the train derailed in town, or the neighbour tried to beat the train and lost. Some railroads have been creating the"feel-good" moments to a greater or lesser degree. The CPR's Holiday Trains just before Christmas have generated a lot of favorable publicity, as do the Santa trains and other such special movements on other roads. They provide the missing human face that the railroads need.
But all too often, wonderful opportunities are missed. When CPR runs its steam locomotive "Empress" 2816 and it stops in town, lots of people come out to see it. Now you have drawn a fascinated crowd with "honey", it's time to do a little bit of educating to complete its PR role. The railroad has a message it would like to get out, and a receptive crowd available. But there is a disconnect, total silence. Perhaps drop a couple of display boards out of the baggage car while the engine is being serviced, or distribute pamphlets. If the display board can get minor modifications to be of local relevance for each stop it would leave a lasting impression. Keep the message simple.
Unfortunately, any positive results are rarely quantifiable for the bean counters. The costly and bitter fight that was avoided over some subsequent expansion project does not appear on any balance sheet, nor is there any legacy of ill-will and spite.
Just my thoughts, supplementing the many well-reasoned posts already made on this interesting discussion thread
John
cx500 As has been generally agreed, apart from local occurrences there is little hostility to the railroads, John
As has been generally agreed, apart from local occurrences there is little hostility to the railroads,
I'd just like to point out that EVERYWHERE that the RR and the public have an innerface, is by definition a "local ocurrence"
Railway Man [snip] Railways are not an isolated little kingdom that can do whatever they wish behind a closed door, but very much out there in the public realm, with complex and extensive interactions with the public (via their elected representatives and agencies) on virtually every action they take. Ignoring or discounting public opinion is an express train to failure. Stepping back a minute, my observation is that few people in this forum realize how much involvement railways have with public agencies and elected representatives. It's deep, it's extensive, it's complex, and it's daily. I think even most people who work for railways, outside of engineering department and government affairs, have no idea how much the public agencies and representatives are embedded in our business. We can not legally ignore them, and we cannot get anything done without partnering with them. If I want to drive piles to repair a trestle, I might need to talk with USACE, USFWS, the SHPO, the USCG, and maybe four or five other agencies for 2 years before I think about putting a single new butt into the water. If I want to build a yard, I'd better start talking with the county, the MPO, the state, the EPA, the state DEQ, the state DOT, four or five years before I call in the yellow iron. Commuter, Amtrak, high-speed rail -- all of those are major interactions with the public, and woe be to a railway that thinks it can stonewall or ignore them, or not hold their hand and help them understand how to work with a railway. As far as the government is concerned, railways have a unique and special relationship with the public called "the franchise," and if railways want to maintain that relationship, they had better work at it. RWM
Early in my civil engineering career I became aware of how much of that business - and the railroads, as well - is inextricably intertwined with government, the legislatures, laws, lawyers, the legal system, and the economic/ banking system that is usually needed to furnish the money 'fuel' that makes it all happen. Unlike most of the other engineering branches and many [though not all] professions, it's not really possible to practice without that involvement - anything else is likely to be just minor projects. Often the better or more important the concept or proposal is, the more public involvement is necessary to implement it. So if you can't communicate an idea and be able to arrange to implement it, you may as well not have had it, or it is nevertheless functionally worthless. Harsh, messy, and unfair as that may be, it is nevertheless true in the large majority of instances, in my experience and opinion.
- Paul North.
Nicely said, Paul.
The comments on the term "Public Interest" are quite interesting from a historical perspective. The reformers of the Progressive Era had a belief that the various interest groups (industry, finance, labor, etc) should be subsumed to the needs of "The People" and used this belief as a philosophical basis for much of the regulatory legislation that came out of that period.
The phrase that comes to mind is "...for the public interest, convenience and neccessity." And that would be followed by government agencies with names like Public Service Commission, Public Utilities Commission, etc.
Railway Man Nicely said, Paul.
Well . . . thanks ! I consider that to be high praise indeed, considering the source.
To continue a little bit: There are an unbelievable number of lawyers involved with most construction projects - usually at minimum the principal construction contract guys [plus those for any public bidding requirements, plus real estate and title insurance counsel, the DOT and PUC sounsel for grade crossings and other complex projects, plus those for any invovlved utilities, sometimes bond counsel [finance - not surety - that's yet another layer], insurance representatives, the regulatory permit lobbyists/ attorneys, also usually several municipal solicitors [zoning, approvals, building permits], legislators and administrative lawyers, plus the labor law attorneys, including OSHA/ EEOC/ M-WBE, etc., plus the lawyers for various vendors, suppliers, and many, many others.
In view of that list, and their unavoidable involvement in and ability to effectively halt any project for seeemingly any reason or no [apparent good] reason, I concluded that you couldn't swing the proverbial 'dead cat' without hitting one. Further, the typical engineer is just as helpless and impotent as a 'babe in the woods' among those lions/ tigers/ bears/ sharks/ crocodiles [take your pick]. So if I wanted to be effective and not continually baffled or BS'd about things I didn't really understand and didn't have any credibility or knowledge to argue or debate through to a better conclusion, I needed to become better informed and 'credentialled' to be able to stand on an equal or better footing with them, when needed. So that's mainly why I went to and graduated from law school.
Further - earlier this morning I was reading quotations* from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and I thought this one apropos to this thread:
''For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.'' - The Path of Law" 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897). [emphasis added - PDN.]
* http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes,_Jr.
And RWM, I think you'll appreciate this one [same source]:
''I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.''
Thanks again.
And most of us know of the [in]famous saying from William H.Vanderbilt in response to an inquiry regarding same:
Wait . . .
for . . .
it . . .
''THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED.''
See: http://www.trivia-library.com/b/origins-of-sayings-the-public-be-damned.htm
- PDN.
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