Railroad Retirement: 'Don't Tread on Me!'

Abstract

Students of freight railroading are conversant with how Congress and the Surface Transportation Board's predecessor Interstate Commerce Commission imposed on the industry such rigid economic regulation that railroads became starved of investment capital, were forced to defer normalized maintenance and failed to meet customer wants. Just in time, Congress recognized how and why the railroad industry was on the cusp of chaotic market failure and took bolt cutters--the 1980 Staggers Rail Act--to the regulatory chains. Private-sector freight railroading was thus rescued from the clutches of insolvency with renewed ability to serve customers.