A proposal on the rails
Found this interesting take on various options to shore-up the conditions of our freight /
passenger rail system. The author suggested a partial nationalization of the rails, similar
to the system we have for Interstate highways. The government would purchase all of the
private rails and right-of-ways from the corporate owners and be responsible for the
maintenance. The private rail companies would retain possession of the engines, cars,
and tankers and have responsibility for their equipment maintenance.
The government would then lease track access to the companies on a
per mile/per tonnage/train length to recoup the public investment. Inspections and
licensing would be similar to auto/truck/vehicles which is already in place.
Strict regulation and fines may reign-in the blight we now have. The same structure is
also in place with commercial shipping via waterways and coastal vessels.
What are your thoughts?
https://inthesetimes.com/article/nationalize-the-railroads-workers-on-st...
Comments
It may be step in the right direction
Any self regulated industry controlled by Wall Street will favor profits over safety.
A vital infrastructure needs to consider viability for the overall benefit of workers
and shippers, not shareholders.
Some countries with nationalized rail systems
Per Wiki ..
Russia, Argentina, Canada, France Germany, India, Italy, Spain, China
Many others are a hybrid of a public/private nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_nationalization
Even in those that are a hybrid
the successful systems are ones which use the private entity for specific contracted services and the services are awarded on a competitive basis based upon specific requirements defined by the customer. BTW, requirements should never be subcontracted.
Like industrial support during WW2. The opposite of the current industrial support for the MIC.
If you can find a copy of this proprietary document....
OUT-SOURCED PROFITS – THE CORNERSTONE OF SUCCESSFUL SUBCONTRACTING
by Dr. L. J. HART-SMITH
presented at Boeing Third Annual Technical Excellence (TATE) Symposium
St. Louis, Missouri
February 14-15, 2001
A very good piece. (added on edit:) If later performance is a measure, I'm pretty certain the admonishment in this document was ignored.
Boeing is a great example
of a company that completely lost its way as it "grew". The 1997 merger of Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas spelled the beginning of the end of Boeing, to my way of thinking.
Boeing had always been run by engineers, and damned good ones. McD-D had been run by MBAs for quite a while, with more focus on the paper funny-money business than the actual flight hardware. This merger has often been referred to as "McD-D buying Boeing using Boeing's own money".
After the merger, the old Boeing management was essentially shoved out the door, and replaced pretty much wholesale by McD-D corporate types. We all know what happened next, and continues to happen today: their product went to hell. The above-linked article from The Atlantic sums it up pretty well. An excerpt:
Mr. Sinnett, quoted above, was a McD-D alum... Anyway, a bunch of pilots who used to say "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!" have had to learn a new catchphrase or two.
Here's the link to that proprietary Boeing document. It is indeed painful to read, given what we now know about the outcome...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
This is
absolutely the right thing to do.
With all corporations being run by
sociopathsMBAs, who care only about the size of their bonuses should they crank up that shareholder value to meet their targets, infrastructure maintenance has taken a very distant back seat for decades. The days of the railroads being run by railroaders is a distant memory.Major infrastructure should be maintained like the fragile thing it is: rail beds, bridges, and especially signalling/fault detection hardware have been given short shrift for decades. The number of hotbox detectors that are completely nonfunctional blows my mind. The coal trains that run the N-S main line along the front range through Denver are generally well maintained, but the mixed freight consists that come through always seem to have a few smokin' or clankin'. The railroads need to be run the way the FAA runs the airlines: with hours logged and A,B, and C checks for power units and rolling stock, and very active monitoring of on-track fault conditions.
MBAs don't do maintenance. It isn't instantly profitable, and is one of those costs that you automatically cut on your way to Profitability Valhalla, along with firing all the competent people- they all want too much money, after all. Put in an intern.
Well, if I don't have the right to continue breathing, then your corporation sure as hell doesn't have the right to a guaranteed profit. Capiche?
Many high-end business people have forgotten that all aspects of their business need equal focus: and safety and preventive maintenance simply cannot be put on the shelf to worry about next week.
I like this proposal very much. Of course, to implement it, we would have to stop spending all our money on blowing shit up, so I don't hold out much hope for it actually happening during my lifetime.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Yes, the airlines are another good example
Not sure how many airports are in the public domain, but the regulatory structure in place
for aircraft inspections by the state are quite robust. Supervised maintenance and trained
inspectors works in that industry. We also do not see the disasters of the rail system in the
maritime and trucking industries. Enforcement is key. Hey Buttigieg, you listening?
Ahh, reverse the corporate eminent domain "rule"
that built the monstrosity we have today.
I think that if we leave any opening big enough in the tent for that corporate/banker camel to get his nose in the tent pretty soon we'd be buried in camel shit and not allowed to shovel any of it out. Kinda like what we ended up with in the post office, the medicare, the internets, the education, etc.
I believe that number one we need to establish what is part of the commons, owned by we, the people, and absolutely forbidden to be sold to any corporate/private entity. We absolutely hang on to the pink slip and any gov't bureaucrat who tries to sell any of it be immediately investigated for corruption and fraud. That includes scotus or any lesser judicials.
Any negotiation should start and end with ensuring that we, the people, control our basic functional requirements. Otherwise we become the serfs depending on the lord's pleasure for our existence.
/rant
Pretty much what exindy said. So called public-private
partnerships evolve into regulated utilities which become private companies owning and ruling the so-called regulators; textbook fascism. Government ownership. To what degree operations, maintenance and that can be contracted out needs to be determined, but labor needs a big voice in operations and such but you must keep the spoils system from creeping back in.
This is waaay too easy to say in an era when both parties re trying to drown government in a bathtub except as a vehicle for funding the MIC.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Bye the by
Interesting how the Acela trains were built in France.
And most of the fire fighting trucks are built overseas.
It would be a good start to re-think the bottom line and
re-tool domestic industries to supply the equipment we use.
I think this is a good step in the right direction...
And maybe the hybrid system would work. It's interesting that after selling off the rail system in Britain, the government had to step back in and take control of parts of it, become an, admittedly poorly done, hybrid system, because the private rail companies wouldn't do stuff like maintenance of tracks and so on.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so