Gunpowder Chronicle posted on June 7, 2008 12:12 AM | Rating:
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The best news out of the collapse of Warner-Lieberman this week in the US Senate is that we will still have a railroad industry. The impact on railroads was largely overlooked in the debate, but the fact is that if Warner-Lieberman had passed, three of the nation's four largest railroads would have collapsed.
And that would have been bad, very bad.
Nearly every ton of coal used in the United States travels by rail at one point in its life. And that coal traverses that nation primarily on three railroads -- Burlington Northern-Sante Fe (BNSF), Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific. CSX hauls some coal, but primarily as a common carrier, and not as a source road. Coal hauling is a highly profitable part of their business. Coal hauling underwrites the bulk of freight service on any railroad, but especially on these three roads.
Had Warner-Lieberman passed the Senate and been signed into law, the coal industry would be dead in a decade. And with coal, the railroads would die.
And without railroads, there would be little if any affordable bulk transport ability. No more container transshipments. Decreased ability to transport new vehicles -- domestics and imports. Building materials, chemicals, fuel -- everything -- would have to be transported over the road, at higher cost and higher risk.
Thank God for small failures.