Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I thought it would be witty to riff off the title of one of John Hughes's many famous movies after his passing a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, real life got in the way of my well-laid plans, which makes this post now either completely tasteless or completely untimely. I hope for the latter.

But the title hints at something that has always nagged at me, and now nags at me more as I read Atlas Shrugged (don't give anything away: taking New Jersey back from statists is taking up my free time right now!) and Taggart Transcontinental.

The nagging problem? Namely the "why" of the fall of railroads and the rise of the automobile in this country. The automobile itself did not. It had been around since the turn of the century and gained huge popularity with Henry Ford and his assembly line. And it did bring the driver newfound independence that rigid train schedules and routes could not. But rail still thrived until the post-war period. So what caused rail's collapse? A hint: the government's finger isn't too far away.

The federal government funded the Interstate Highway System after the Second World War (and before then helped fund the US Highway system in the 1920s). This create a cheap, fully subsidized large network of routes for automobiles to travel on. How could railway companies that bought rights of way on land, maintained hundreds of miles of track, and paid taxes, rent, and maintenance on stations-worth of property afford to compete? They couldn't. The airplane too, helped nail the coffin too. Who possible helped fund the airport infrastructure around the country (Another hint: it begins with a G).

Many of the complaints today about pollution and traffic from cars all stem from the federal government's support of road construction: subsidies create an inefficient, non-equilibrium excess of supply. We can see that from Americans' addiction to cars, traffic jams going into cities, and infmaous smog in LA.

So what would be the best way to remedy the situation. Fighting fire with fire by subsidizing rail travel seems to be a bad idea. Privatizing rail again could return profitabiliy to the system. Amtrak's perpetual red operating budget might disprove the feasibility of the idea. But we moderns forget that rail companies back in the glory days ran both passenger and freight service, with the freight service's profitability helping compensate for some loss and slack service on the passenger lines. Merging freight and passenger back into private companies could help return the system to being self-sufficient. It is telling that Conrail, the government's "freight Amtrak" of the North-east is now reprivatized in the hands of CSX and seemingly profitable again.

For roads, it might do well to privatize them as well. Setting up tolls run by private companies would force drivers to internalize some of the costs of driving now hoisted upon the rest of the population by general taxation to pay for road repair. Also it would cut back on traffic and the unnatural demand a subsidized system now creates. If the idea of no free roads is unsettling, highways could be made two-tiered so the toll-paying drivers would have special express lanes, but their fees help carry the cost of the rest of the roads.

Unfortunately, the current system is too mucked up with government involvement in all ends (the ICC's regulation of rail travel in the 20th Century certainly didn't help the railway companies remain profitable) to be untangled properly. But having toll roads farmed out to private companies and privatization of railway companies is a first step to restoring effective and profitability transportation in the US.