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The past several years have seen a level of greed, abuse, and dysfunction on the part of America’s largest railroad corporations that has many comparing them to the infamous Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century. Captive to the interests of aggressive “activist” investors intent on extracting ever-more profit through stock buybacks and price-gouging, today’s Class I railroads have failed to meaningfully grow their volumes over the past two decades. The quality of their service, meanwhile, has only deteriorated. They are, however, making record profits.

The service meltdowns, threatened strike, and disastrous derailments of recent years had already drawn scrutiny to the industry when Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced their intention to merge. If approved, the merger would leave more shippers captive to the monopoly control of a single Class I railroad and leave the nation with just five of them, at most. The prospect of further defensive mergers is widely seen as less a question of if than of when.

Though the crisis has only recently broken into the public eye, its origins lie much further back.

In Episode 4. Private Railroads for Public Purpose: Battles, Misadventures, and Extraordinary Measures, we explored the many crises the system has faced throughout its history and the fundamental tension between the public purpose of rail service and the American insistence upon entrusting it to private corporations.

In Episode 5. Profitability at Any Cost: The Price We Paid to Rescue U.S. Railroads, we saw how the near-collapse of the entire industry in the 1960s and ‘70s led to a fundamental reversal of the approach we had taken—not by taking public responsibility for the provision of service, or even for the construction and maintenance of the tracks, but rather by shifting the emphasis of public policy from the public’s access to service to the ability of railroad corporations to make a profit at any cost.

That cost was steep: smaller communities lost rail service, tens of thousands of miles of track were abandoned, and 40 Class I railroads consolidated into just seven, focused increasingly on the most profitable long-distance freight. For the first two decades after deregulation, railroads could point to rising freight volumes and falling average rates. Around the turn of the century, however, that growth came to an end, and the contours of today’s predicament began to take shape.

This episode ties together the railroad history we have traced over the past several months. It seeks to illuminate our present situation, place it within broader transformations in the U.S. and global economies, and point the way toward a fundamental reimagining of rail transport in this country.

With Gratitude & Solidarity,

Bill Moyer

Mentioned:

• Interview with East Palestine resident and organizer Jess Conard, “When the Community Speaks Up—Rail Safety Edition”

• Maddock Thomas’ white paper, “‘Putting America Back on Track’: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System”

Reconnect America is hosted by Bill Moyer, co-author of the book Solutionary Rail: A People-powered Campaign to Electrify America’s Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future. Check out the essays and supplemental posts that complement this podcast HERE.

Co-written and produced by Bill Moyer and Sasha Elenko. Engineering by August Moore and Tom Stiles. Musical theme by Ken Jacobsen and additional music by Ota Prota.

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