Have others noticed that aside from those few souls conscripted to promote the interests of railroads on Capitol Hill, the term “Staggers Rail Act” has lost its intended meaning?
At a time when polemics is delivering knockout blows to civil discourse and collaboration, a 78-year-old former amateur boxer—still punching above his weight—has advice on peaceful dispute resolution that lawmakers, regulators, rail executives and labor leaders would do well to read, mark and inwardly digest.
For those sheltering railroads against assaults on regulatory freedoms, the 1980 Staggers Rail Act (Staggers) is considered sacrosanct.
Railroads that are revenue adequate and earn their cost of capital should not be punished by capping their shipping rates, which would discourage the substantial and mostly private investment in the nation’s critical rail transportation infrastructure, CSX Executive Vice President and CFO Fredrik Eliasson told the Surface Transportation Board at a July 22 hearing.
Testifying at a July 22, 2015 Surface Transportation Board hearing on railroad revenue adequacy, the Association of American Railroads, executives from its member railroads and economic experts urged federal regulators “to beware of upending numerous national economic goals” if they choose to pursue re-instituting revenue caps on freight rail companies.
For more than three decades, railroad regulators have used the same method to determine which shippers are captive; and, if so, to determine a remedy to limit railroad market power and assure rates charged captive shippers are reasonable.
Poor Mr. Dooley—Calvin, that is, president of the American Chemistry Council and not the fictional Mr. Dooley created during the late 19th century by humorist Finley Peter Dunne. The latter gained library space in Teddy Roosevelt’s White House; the former seemed to hoist himself by his own petard—Shakespeare speak (“Hamlet”) for the bomb maker managing to blow himself up with his own device.
Freedom from excessive regulation helped transform the freight railroads into the most cost effective of all transportation modes. There’s no reason to change that.
A recurring and intractable thread tying together railroad history is that when the choice has been between economic liberty and government intrusion, selecting the latter has repetitively discouraged capital investment, diminished service quality, adversely affected safety, and sooner than later caused hand-wringing among those most dependent on rail transportation.
