Britain tried that. Network Rail, a unit of the Government, owns the tracks, and 28 or so Train Operating Companies run the trains.
The UK started out with railroads in private ownership. They were nationalized in 1948, as British Rail. Then they were de-nationalized in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, they're being re-nationalized.
FWIW, while the instinctive response here will be that this is a monopolistic and anti-consumer play, the reality is that these companies share almost zero routes. There's no real way for railroads to be be competitive unless they are fighting for the same customers (and UP/NS are not).
So, the statements about improved operational efficiency are not totally implausible.
What's the argument for the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger [1]? Any rational admin would shoot down the merger immediately as this will create a massive monopoly.
Perhaps a monopoly is the way for the rail, preferably state-owned.
Generally I'm heavily against both monopolies and state-controlled companies, but railways seem to be a corner-case where all the downsides and inefficiencies are outweighted by a nation-wide system that actually works.
Would this have an impact on Amtrak service? The trains in my area often get stopped by freight traffic, and Chicago is pretty much a mandatory change-over point. Could this allow some routes to open up connecting each side of the Mississippi more fluidly in the longer term?
We got a new route (well, a new train running on a segment of an existing route, offering more flexibility for scheduling) from MSP to CHI recently, which has been great.
Private railroads are a mistake. Let's see what the private railroad industry has done.
The railroads kept reducing their workforce to get an uptick in profitability, so much so that there wasn't enough spare capacity for railroad workers to get paid sick leave of any kind. The railroad workforce were taking industrial action to get paid sick leave. What happened? Congress stepped in to use legislation to end a labor dispute for essential workers to side with the company. Oh and this was under Biden. As an aside, a later deal was made to give them a handful of paid sick days, quietly.
If the railroad caved to 100% of the union's demands it would've cost 6% of the company's profits. Not revenue. Profits.
The other is an industry wide effort called Precision Scheduled Railroads ("PSR"). Basically this means having trains with twice as many carriages and skipping safety chcecks because that costs money.
There are over 1000 train derailments a year. Most of these aren't a big deal. Others are like East Palestine, Ohio a few years ago, which caused a toxic spill in a populated area, something that continues to be an issue [1]. A lot of toxic chemicals are transported by rail. What was insane was the media didn't report on the East Palestine derailment for a week to 10 days despite there being a black toxic plume that could be seen from space. They were finally embarrassed into covering it by social media, particularly Tiktok.
All railroad companies do to maintain and increase profits is cut costs, pretty much like every other company. That means suppressing wages, skimping on maintenance and safety and not investing in fixing anything.
They built the railroads, often on their own dime, and paid taxes by the fistful for them.
Their competition was subsidized by the general government, and continues to be every year.
If you want to argue that nationalizing railroads should be done for the public good, do that - dont just demonize them, because its not a fully winning argument.
No surprise when the rails are utter dogshit. Something like [1] - you can clearly see how incredibly uneven the track is - which flies over my youtube feed way too much for my liking would yield immediate regulatory action here in Germany.
The rules that govern American railroads are impressively weird and arcane. They seem almost impossible to unravel at this point. Which is a shame, because so many American cities sacrifice the central corridors of their city to huge railyards and slow-moving freight trains.
I think of Portland, Oregon, where the tracks run north/south along the river. You can see them sitting there empty while you're stuck in traffic on I-5, which runs parallel. Running a commuter rail or light rail on those things would make life a lot less miserable trying to get around the city.
...it would also completely fuck any remaining Amtrak traffic that isn't on Amtrak-owned track. Norfolk Southern already routinely ignores the actual on-the-books law that prioritizes passenger traffic over freight, and UP isn't much better out west. BNSF we'll just ignore.
The cynical take is that two public company CEOs have run out of ideas for further stock growth and are looking for anything else that will juice the share price in the short term.
Neither company is so inefficient that you can save much of anything by combining the two, and there is only so far you can raise prices before customers switch to trucks or send container ships to different ports of call. With no overlapping territory, you aren't going to cut the number of trains you run and you can't get rid of half your maintenance staff (can you?).
Investment banks will do well running the merger and surely they'll issue debt to finance it. But what kind of growth can we really expect?
These articles are a good reminder of a bittersweet truth: the US has an incredibly advanced and dense rail network, paid for with federal land grants[1]; we just choose not to use it to benefit travelers. That isn't to say that we need a system that's as good as most European countries have; having these railroad companies follow the laws around Amtrak's priority would be a good start[2].
Among the G8 we probably have the least-electrified, slowest rail network with the worst Positive Train Control. Probably the most dangerous, too, given how disastrous Precision Railroad Scheduling has been for safety. We also likely have the highest crash and derailment rates.
ASES, ACSES, ETMS, CBTM, CBOSS, E-ATC, ITCS, and whatever Union Pacific is using. That's over half a dozen different systems and none of them are inherently compatible with each other - specialized systems are required to tie the systems together on railways that might have trains with different systems.
I'm guessing no other country in the G8 has issues with freight train movement such that trains routinely bisect towns and entire counties for hours or more and force police, fire, and medical services to reroute, as well as require children to crawl underneath the trains (which could start moving without warning) to get to/from school.
Why? Because the feds are not regulating train lengths nor mandating that trains cannot block road intersections for more than a certain amount of time, so the railways do whatever they please.
I'm guessing no other G8 country has problems with the government (federal, state, or local) having no idea what hazardous materials are being shipped and where...no way to look it up, not noticed by the railroad, nothing.
> we just choose not to use it to benefit travelers
The Northeast Corridor is the only viable rail corridor in the US. It could be better, but we absolutely use it. Comparing the US to Europe is a mistake because cities aren't dense enough and are too far apart for European style rail to work.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Union_Pacific_and_Norfolk...
That said, they're obviously reluctant to criticize the larger railroads.
The UK started out with railroads in private ownership. They were nationalized in 1948, as British Rail. Then they were de-nationalized in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, they're being re-nationalized.
None of this is considered a huge success.
So, the statements about improved operational efficiency are not totally implausible.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/union-pacific-talks-advance...
Generally I'm heavily against both monopolies and state-controlled companies, but railways seem to be a corner-case where all the downsides and inefficiencies are outweighted by a nation-wide system that actually works.
For those that have never heard of that game, please enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neWZVhmSFJs
We got a new route (well, a new train running on a segment of an existing route, offering more flexibility for scheduling) from MSP to CHI recently, which has been great.
The railroads kept reducing their workforce to get an uptick in profitability, so much so that there wasn't enough spare capacity for railroad workers to get paid sick leave of any kind. The railroad workforce were taking industrial action to get paid sick leave. What happened? Congress stepped in to use legislation to end a labor dispute for essential workers to side with the company. Oh and this was under Biden. As an aside, a later deal was made to give them a handful of paid sick days, quietly.
If the railroad caved to 100% of the union's demands it would've cost 6% of the company's profits. Not revenue. Profits.
The other is an industry wide effort called Precision Scheduled Railroads ("PSR"). Basically this means having trains with twice as many carriages and skipping safety chcecks because that costs money.
There are over 1000 train derailments a year. Most of these aren't a big deal. Others are like East Palestine, Ohio a few years ago, which caused a toxic spill in a populated area, something that continues to be an issue [1]. A lot of toxic chemicals are transported by rail. What was insane was the media didn't report on the East Palestine derailment for a week to 10 days despite there being a black toxic plume that could be seen from space. They were finally embarrassed into covering it by social media, particularly Tiktok.
All railroad companies do to maintain and increase profits is cut costs, pretty much like every other company. That means suppressing wages, skimping on maintenance and safety and not investing in fixing anything.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/05/1228772709/east-palestine-tra...
Their competition was subsidized by the general government, and continues to be every year.
If you want to argue that nationalizing railroads should be done for the public good, do that - dont just demonize them, because its not a fully winning argument.
No surprise when the rails are utter dogshit. Something like [1] - you can clearly see how incredibly uneven the track is - which flies over my youtube feed way too much for my liking would yield immediate regulatory action here in Germany.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/A0ZYKJm-tno
I think of Portland, Oregon, where the tracks run north/south along the river. You can see them sitting there empty while you're stuck in traffic on I-5, which runs parallel. Running a commuter rail or light rail on those things would make life a lot less miserable trying to get around the city.
Neither company is so inefficient that you can save much of anything by combining the two, and there is only so far you can raise prices before customers switch to trucks or send container ships to different ports of call. With no overlapping territory, you aren't going to cut the number of trains you run and you can't get rid of half your maintenance staff (can you?).
Investment banks will do well running the merger and surely they'll issue debt to finance it. But what kind of growth can we really expect?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_land_grants_in_the_Un...
[2]: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
Among the G8 we probably have the least-electrified, slowest rail network with the worst Positive Train Control. Probably the most dangerous, too, given how disastrous Precision Railroad Scheduling has been for safety. We also likely have the highest crash and derailment rates.
This is a sad joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control#Deploym...
ASES, ACSES, ETMS, CBTM, CBOSS, E-ATC, ITCS, and whatever Union Pacific is using. That's over half a dozen different systems and none of them are inherently compatible with each other - specialized systems are required to tie the systems together on railways that might have trains with different systems.
I'm guessing no other country in the G8 has issues with freight train movement such that trains routinely bisect towns and entire counties for hours or more and force police, fire, and medical services to reroute, as well as require children to crawl underneath the trains (which could start moving without warning) to get to/from school.
Why? Because the feds are not regulating train lengths nor mandating that trains cannot block road intersections for more than a certain amount of time, so the railways do whatever they please.
I'm guessing no other G8 country has problems with the government (federal, state, or local) having no idea what hazardous materials are being shipped and where...no way to look it up, not noticed by the railroad, nothing.
The Northeast Corridor is the only viable rail corridor in the US. It could be better, but we absolutely use it. Comparing the US to Europe is a mistake because cities aren't dense enough and are too far apart for European style rail to work.