Yes, but the actual deregulation of the airline industry, initiated by Carter near the end of his one and only term, and the deregulation of trucking, had little impact on Amtrak.
Amtrak originated as a government corporation, "owned" less than more, by the government and member railroads. Member railroads received no stock, no warrants, etc. Amtrak was an initial attempt to relieve the eastern and northeastern railroads of the burden of long haul passenger service, to maintain however erratically and poorly some sort of national passenger service, and in particular pick up some of the pieces from the wreck of the Penn Central. You might think that deregulation of the airlines and the creation of air shuttle service along the NE corridor from Boston-NY-Washington put the NEC operation of Amtrak between a rock and a hard place. It didn't. The rock and the hard place was created by the decline of the rolling stock, and the failures to provide suitable replacement-- anybody remember General Electric's E60 locomotives? These had to be restricted in speed along the NEC due to "hunting," a term that means the wheels on the axles of the trucks do not, at speed, maintain a consistent rolling point of contact on the rail head but actually "hunt" laterally for a point of equilibrium. E60s were great coal hauling locomotives, and actually I think Amtrak's fleet wound up in Arizona on the Black Mesa railroad hauling ore and coal. Not so good for 110 mph passenger operations on a corridor. What hampered Amtrak, hampers Amtrak is the lack of long-term capital funding from Congress-- in itself a reflection of the burden of maintaining, and upgrading fixed capital. Regarding freight railroad operations, much has been made of the Staggers Act, deregulating railroads and "restoring" competition to the railroads, precipitating the "leaner and meaner" of the freight network. In truth, all deregulation was about was a response to the costs of the fixed capital, of the overproduction of the railroad as capital. And what was the backdrop to deregulation? Bankruptcy of the Rock Island, the Milwaukee Road, etc. Deregulation allowed merger, reduction, retirement, abandonment, redundancy, and also imposed a 3 year wage freeze on Conrail workers. And the result? Well Class 1 railroads, defined as those exceeding a certain level of annual revenues [set now at $300 million I think] went from owning/operating 230,000 miles of track to the current 140,000 miles of track; operating employment dropped from over a million at the end of WW2 to 500,000 to 250,000 today's current 110,000. Commuter operations were separated from the Class 1s and handed over to state/local governments. Revenue ton-miles? Way up. All praise the genius of containerization Operating costs per ton-mile? way down. All praise crew reduction agreements, computer assisted dispatching, high adhesion locomotives, 100 ton hoppers, the 200 car train, track laying machines. Safety? Way up. All praise random and mandatory drug/alcohol testing, proper maintenance, employee training .. Productivity per worker? Way up. All hail all of the above. Haul rates during the capital improvement boon of the 90s? Down. And the number of operating Class 1s? Way down now to 7. Rate of return in the industry? Tough to pin this down-- think the AAR says 7%- 9%. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Perelman" <mich...@ecst.csuchico.edu> To: "David Schanoes" <sartes...@earthlink.net> Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 10:33 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Teddy ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
