Esch-Cummins Act anniversary

A bit late, but the Esch-Cummins Act went into affect on March 1, 1920, 100 years ago! This act returned US railroads to private control as the were previously used by the government for World War I. As an advocate of privately-owned railroads, I would like to recognize this act as it serves as a basis for my theory of possibly restoring passenger rail service in the US to private corporations. A discussion of privately ran passenger lines in the US is not intended in this thread as I am only writing this to recognize the 100 year anniversary of an act which is similar to what I propose for the future of passenger rail in the nation.

Don't get me wrong, I am broadly in agreement with the notion that regulated private railroads 'work' in the highly competitive context of early 20th US, but a whole lot of the terrible-things-done-to-the-industry were the product of the fact that the public wanted to get away from powerful unaccountable railroads, to the long term detriment of the economy and environment. Gotta kill off proto-containerization to prevent the rich roads from squeezing out the poor roads. Gotta set rates high enough to keep the weak roads alive and cross-subsidize. Gotta build freeways to get away from the traction and railroad's service deficiencies. So man things could have been avoided had the railroad's interests been more strongly aligned with the public interest. And other features, like heavy railroad property taxes or full crew laws or mandatory, unfunded passenger services that helped drag much of the industry down when it faced road competition could have been reduced or mitigated by federal pre-emption and as-desired federal subsidies.

Re-privatization, however, put us on the pathway to badly-regulated private operation that we saw in the following 60 years, and it's attendant disinvestment and the downgrading of an efficient, universal transportation system into a lowest-cost, lowest value conveyance mechanism

bdawe wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:00 pm Don't get me wrong, I am broadly in agreement with the notion that regulated private railroads 'work' in the highly competitive context of early 20th US, but a whole lot of the terrible-things-done-to-the-industry were the product of the fact that the public wanted to get away from powerful unaccountable railroads, to the long term detriment of the economy and environment. Gotta kill off proto-containerization to prevent the rich roads from squeezing out the poor roads. Gotta set rates high enough to keep the weak roads alive and cross-subsidize. Gotta build freeways to get away from the traction and railroad's service deficiencies. So man things could have been avoided had the railroad's interests been more strongly aligned with the public interest. And other features, like heavy railroad property taxes or full crew laws or mandatory, unfunded passenger services that helped drag much of the industry down when it faced road competition could have been reduced or mitigated by federal pre-emption and as-desired federal subsidies.

Re-privatization, however, put us on the pathway to badly-regulated private operation that we saw in the following 60 years, and it's attendant disinvestment and the downgrading of an efficient, universal transportation system into a lowest-cost, lowest value conveyance mechanism

I am aware that there was a call for railroads to be ran by the government in America at the time in order to regulate as they were corrupt at the time (such as charging higher rates for shorter distances than for longer distances). However I propose to have passenger service ran by private corporations and run under the same rules and regulations which Amtrak and any other passenger and freight railroad has to run under.

How many threads are you going to make about your juvenile privatization obsession? It's like, every single thread by you has some sorta pro-privatization message. It's annoying.

Privatization is unique because in almost every country it's been tried, it's led to a cascade of failing service, giving railroads to foreign operators who use them solely to bankroll their own homeland operations, decline of service (including tearing electrification down wholesale) and generally railroads existing for profit instead of for the public.

But no, that doesn't matter, because uhh brightline have pretty train and smiley attendant

admin note

Our Congress cannot pass appropriations acts in a timely manner, let alone substantive legislation

We don’t have open rails, the Class I railroads don’t want passenger service, and this is all a drug deluded pipe dream.

Thanks for participating, locked