New Report Argues Private Rail Is a Train Wreck, Public Ownership Needed
New Report Argues Private Rail Is a Train Wreck, Public Ownership Needed
"Our nation's rail system is in disarray," an expert said. "Dominated by a small group of giant for-profit companies, it is imperiling the health and safety of workers and communities."
Rail lives in that weird category like rural mail or power service (or, for that matter, highways) -- you need to provide it if you want your country to be a civilized place, but it's real real hard to make it available at a reasonable price and still turn a profit.
Turns out the answer was government, all along...
Railway doesn't have to be profitable under government funding. The railway is a way to establish profitable businesses surrounding the railway. The profit comes from taxes paid by everyone getting work because of the railway.
That was exactly my point, yes
You didn't pave these roads!
Not everything has to turn a profit directly. Some stuff, like public transport services will most probably work at a loss, bit will generate profit indirectly. e.g making people take the car less frequently, generating less traffic accidents which at the same time, reduce the load of the healthcare system... Oh right, I forgot we're talking about the US, where healthcare also needs to turn a profit...
We already spend billions on "public transport services". We just spend it in one of the least efficient ways possible. Roads and highways. It costs so much to maintain the infrastructure is crumbling and people are too car-brained to admit how awful the situation is.
people are too car-brained to admit how awful the situation is.
I challange you to find one American who doesn't constantly complain about their local roads. I've driven everywhere across the US excluding the pacific north west and everywhere I've been ppl complain about lack of up keep. Rightfully so
Part of the discussion with US rail is that American rail carries some freight service and it would be better environmentally to maintain that service than go all passenger.
For profit companies have shown themselves as being bad at running freight rail, but the solution to public rail needs to include freight.
Germany has the same problems. After the reunification they merged the east and west state railway companies into a private enterprise, the Deutsche Bahn AG. Since then, the service progressively became worse and the prices unaffordable.
They engaged in a downward spiral of cutting infrastructure investments and reducing coverage/offer and having less private travellers. Now the infrastructure is such a bad state, that the bad quality of the service is a running gag in Germany. Voyagers now expect their train being late and hope that it will not be cancelled last minute.
In the last couple of years, there has been a push to invested in the infrastructure, but it's too little too late and it's going to take decades to make the train an attractive option again.
One of the reason why they are still getting by financially, is because the have very good marketing.
Here's a good video about it. It's in German, but you can get the English auto-translation.
As an American living in NRW, German trains are a well oiled machine compared to their US counterparts. Our trains constantly derail, catch fire, break down etc. I love having S-bahn, U-bahn, and RE compared to the underfunded death traps that are Amtrack, and major city subway systems. It sucks occasionally but I don't fear for my life on a German train
Ayn Rand wrote a very silly book about how the government was interfering with railroads and how that was a terrible, terrible thing.
It's always a good day when something Ayn Rand suggested is once again shown to be utter nonsense.
And one has to merely mention the Vandertunts to find another example of why the railroads should be public.
It's certainly a far more entertaining watch than Atlas Shrugged is to read. It's just awful. I couldn't even get all the way through it, I ended up reading a summary.
But two things in it really made me laugh-
- That railroads would work better if the government had no involvement (good luck laying track without eminent domain).
- The solution to the world's problems involves violating the laws of physics.
And people take it seriously.
New report argues for obviously needed change that probably isn't going to happen.
Correct opinion is correct
We need National Trackage Rights in the USA.
They had no problem deregulating trucking si that any company can serve any customer, let railroads do the same, i.e. Union Pacific can serve BNSF or NS customers.
And large customers, esp hazmat shippers, can run their own trains. The environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio likely woukd not have happened if those chemicals were self-shipped.
Railroads used to have to run their iwn passenger trains, govt formed Amtrak to take the burden off them. We could give successor railroad companies that burden back.
Only if rail has to compete with 'free' public roads. Private rail had a long history before cars. They were not always loved, but they worked.
There is nothing to argue about, that opinion is spot-on.
That's certainly the case in the UK.
What's the point in competition if they don't actually compete?