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Hemphill's January column - Government dole

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***, You should know as well as anyone that the AAR is nothing but a propaganda vehicle for the current rail oligarchy, therefore they are heavy on the skewing of statistics to fit their narrow point of view. The clue you missed is the inclusion of "revenue" in the ton miles calculations of the so-called "credible" Eno Foundation vs a strict ton-mile analysis. All other modes of transportation have to compete for each and every customer, and thus the profit margins are thin, e.g. there are no captive shippers, thus no monopolistic (mislabeled as "differential") pricing margins. I could carry one ton of cargo 100 miles, say by dirigible for the sake of argument, and that wouldn't register on a pie chart for my modal market share. But if I charged a trillion dollars for this one ton, then on a revenue ton mile basis my mode would be rather significant. But any statistician would discount my dirigible's so-called "market share". The only legitimate comparison between modes is in plain ton-miles, because those other modes don't have the monopoly margins of rail. And you must include all aspects of a commodities transport from origin to final destination, otherwise you are skewing the data to fit a premeditated bias. The facts remain that railroads have not increased basic market share with the implementation of the Staggers Act (but as one other reader pointed out, it did help railroads survive.) The reason for this can be traced to monopolistic empowerment, which tends to denigrate competitive pressures, thus no incentive to aggressively pursue a larger piece of the pie. They are fat and happy with what they've got, and they know that the possibility of new entrants into railroading are nil, so why run the risk of loss with an aggressive marketing strategy? BTW, it's "Rio Linda" not "Rio Lindo". If you're going to steal a quote from Rush, at least get it right.
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