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Freight railroads generally have operated the same way for more than a century: They wait for cargo and leave when customers are ready. Now railroads want to run more like commercial airlines, where departure times are set. Factories, farms, mines or mills need to be ready or miss their trips.
Called "precision-scheduled railroading," or PSR, this new concept is cascading through the industry. Under pressure from Wall Street to improve performance, Norfolk Southern and other large U.S. freight carriers, including Union Pacific Corp. and Kansas City Southern, are trying to revamp their networks to use fewer trains and hold them to tighter schedules. The moves have sparked a stock rally that has added tens of billions of dollars to railroad values in the past six months as investors anticipate lower costs and higher profits.
Calling all Railroad Tycoons...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday April 05 2019, @02:22PM (2 children)
Maybe do both:
Run Amtrak on that rail. Ease congestion by adding more scheduling to freight.
Make Amtrak be closer to or eventually completely self sufficient without subsidies. That is always a good thing.
Now, subsidizing something like Amtrak isn't necessarily a bad thing. Such things can be done in the national interest. We pay for public education with taxes to everyone's benefit. Since it is a democracy, things can be changed through democratic process.
Now if we could just get rid of corruption so that public policy could be the REAL thing that congress and the legislative branch focuses on, instead of tribalism or helping the super rich.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 05 2019, @04:00PM (1 child)
A major pillar of the economy would crumble and the roof just might cave in.
Take it in stages, squeeze it out slowly, no shocks to the system.
I personally like the idea of squeezing out corruption through systematic increases in transparency, you know like requiring elected officials to reveal their tax returns, things like that. Keep moving transparency forward and the corrupt will increasingly find it harder to compete and survive.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 05 2019, @11:54PM
Not happening though, is it? My take is that things will keep getting worse until someone radically adjusts things. Then the trend will resume. Way too many people more concerned about us not spending enough in public funds than on what we're supposed to be spending it on.