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 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...