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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Limitedclear [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by BNSF railfan. If a Railroad requests to STB to have a Rail line Abandoned and the STB says no......Can that RR refuse to run their Trains on it even though the STB still says no to the Abandonment. Thanks. [/quote] Railroads will file for abandonment on marginally profitable lines (or lines that have become a nuisance for some idiosycratic reason) once traffic levels have ostensibly shrunk to the point that the line in question is "obviously" no longer profitable. The trick of course is to find a way to eliminate as much traffic as possible a year or more prior to filing for abandonment to guarantee STB approval. The usual scam is to either purposefully price service at a rate that is not competitive with truck rates and/or provide such dismal service that it forces the remaining customers to turn to other transport modes. Once traffic has disappeared or been severely reduced in carloads for a year or more, then the railroad files for abandonment under the guise of there being "no current traffic" or "current traffic does not support viability." Usually at that point the STB will grant the abandonment and the railroad is free to sell the rails for scrap to China. Such has happend to more than a few profitable lines over the last few decades. [/quote] If this process ever really happened, it hasn't been so for decades, at the very least since passage of the Staggers Act in 1980. Anything that is capable of making a profit nowadays is either kept or spun off to a short line or regional so the Class 1 can keep the traffic... LC [/quote] One needs to include the spector of opportunity costs as it relates to a company purposefully disrupting service and then subsequently abandoning a seemingly profitable line. As we all know, railroads' ROI are pathetically low. For the various micro cases, a business that is operating a railroad should always calculate whether their investment would be more fruitful elsewhere. If indeed the pressures of investors are constantly forcing rail operators to improve ROI's, then you can get a good picture of what really goes on in cases of railroad abandonments. Remember, anything above 0% is technically profit. But profit returns of say 5% in any business will induce re-investment pressures toward other markets. There were and are plenty of shortlines, branchlines, even regional railroads which technically made a profit on there various rail holdings, but the profit margin itself may not match that of ROI's in other sectors which are also open to investment opportunities. This is one of the major problems with having railroad companies owning the right of way (and taking on the expense of maintaining that right of way against their operating revenues). In theory, probably 90% if not all of the current rail infrastructure could be abandoned by the Class I owners if they were allowed, because the stockholders would get better rates of return in other markets. Of course, to do so would cause massive economic turmoil, thus it is more judicious to accompli***he task in the form of thousands of small slices.......
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