I once worked for a subcabinet official at the Department of Transportation who liked to say, "There are a lot of Socialists out there wearing Capitalist suits." He used the term as an insult to describe people who called themselves Capitalists but thought the taxpayers owed them a profit. I was reminded of that in a recent exchange with a subscriber, a transportation consultant who thinks Class I railroads should let short lines use their physical plant for little more than the avoidable cost of using those facilities―that is, the cost of wear and tear caused by the short line. The consultant proposes this as a solution for those short lines whose track cannot accommodate cars of 286,000 lb. gross weight, which have become the de facto standard for most bulk business Instead of these short lines upgrading their track (which isn't cost-effective, or it would have happened already), he thinks Class I railroads should be forced to grant short lines access to their network and allow the short lines to deliver the cars themselves. In effect, he proposes that the government direct Class Is to superimpose a short-line operated 263,000 lb. car network on top of their own 286,000 lb. car network. This is called "competitive access," an oxymoron by any name.
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