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Railroads Don’t Need More Regulation

Yesterday, TheTrucker.com posted an article about a recent petition to the members of the House Small Business Committee.

Apparently, the railroads are requesting the House not to increase regulation on them.

If ever there was a no-crap idea – this is it.

Railroads are currently one of the most heavily regulated modes of transport both for freight and passengers. They are so heavily regulated that the government actually had to take over Amtrak to keep the company solvent. With freight carriers, the Staggers Act in 1980 repealed some of the regulation, and:

railroads and their customers have benefited enormously. Railroads have reinvested $420 billion back into their systems since 1980. The result has been improved service and safety, and nearly double their traffic volumes — all while lowering average rates by more than 50 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. That means the average rail shipper can move twice as much freight today for the same price as in 1980.

You mean if the government doesn’t nanny us at every turn, businesses will make intelligent decisions and customers will benefit? What an amazing concept – have we recently discovered some lost theory from Einstein that led us to this shocking conclusion?

Why the hell do we regulate the railroads so heavily anyway? I understand that we need some regulations – speed for example – keeping the trains under a certain speed limit keeps them from derailing and killing people or spilling hazardous cargo. But wouldn’t the railroads figure this out without the government?

I mean, is it really in any railroad’s interest to continuously derail trains, kill people and destroy their tracks and rolling stock? If that’s really the modus operandi of the railroads, that would definitely be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.

I understand we need regulation, but as with most things, we should strive to achieve the minimum balance that works. A train isn’t like an airplane – you can’t take it anywhere you want. It’s generally confined to these things called rails – hence the name.

The initial railroad regulation protected consumers because when railroads were built, there were no alternatives – railroads largely had a monopoly on moving goods and people. Now we have highways, airlines and improved shipping facilities to compete, so railroads can’t just crap on riders anymore.

The statistics illuminate the truth. Railroads are second only to air travel in safety. They only have .03 deaths per 100 million passenger miles. It is also much more efficient in terms of cost and energy efficiency than airlines of private cars.

Wake up, Congress. The nose-picking sleepover is ending. Time to spend our tax dollars on something useful.