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[quote user="TomDiehl"][quote user="futuremodal"] Read Dick Hassleman's quote on Open Acess: "‘Open access’ is another misnomer. The industry needs to describe that as confiscation of plant, using an example such as ‘government forcing GM to let Ford build autos in one of GM’s newest plants.’ How can companies be expected to spend billions for plant improvement and maintenance if they cannot be the beneficiary of those improvements?” If Dick wants a more apt non-railroad analogy of open access, he needs look no farther than the utility sector, where pipelines and transmission lines are now hosting the offerings of non-owners.  But of course, that analogy would only play to the benefit of open access advocates, since for the most part it has been a glorious success for the utility and energy sectors.  Nope, let's go back to the nutso analogy, since that plays better to the railroad drama queens. The big question here is why railroaders simply cannot discuss open access honestly, even to disagree on it's desirability?  Why all the end of the world dramatics? [/quote] Lame example Dave, and it really isn't the same thing. How can you insure that the electrons put into motion by a particular power provider are the ones you're receiving at your home/business? The power grid is integrated so that all power is standardized at a given voltage and frequency, no matter which plant produces it.  The same can be said about commodities moving through a pipeline. Any cargo carrier has to deliver the same item(s) to the destination that left the point of origin. Talk about a "nutso analogy" by a "drama queen." [/quote] A boxcar put on the tracks in New York is homogenous to the one put on the tracks in SoCal.  There is no production aspect of trackage that favors one company's car over the other, they all fit the same, they all connnect the same.  For what it's worth, many products shipped by rail such as lumber do end up being unloaded far from their original presumed destination.  Freight forwarders regularly divert shipments as demand warrants.  So in that aspect, the railway is much like the pipeline - moving a homogenous product such as lumber that is indistinct from any other load of lumber. Again, such is a much better analogy than that auto plant nonsense. [quote] The reason open access has never been seriously discussed is that it never moved beyond theory in this country, and noone has ever shown the current owners of the railroads why it would be any advantage to split the property from the operation departments. Nobody has made any "end of the world dramatics" about this but you. Or come up with a feasible way to make this work better than what is already in place. [/quote] Actually, is is seriously discussed, and it is already implemented overseas.  Sooner or later, the anachronistic NA rail oligarchy will crack under the pressures of being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. In the meantime, read through this, as you will be quizzed on it later: <A href="http://www.zetatech.com/CORPQIII44.htm">http://www.zetatech.com/CORPQIII44.htm</A>
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