4 ms·
Nationalize the railroads, 100%.
by maybelsyrup 4y ago
Nationalize the railroads, 100%.
- jcranmer 4y agoConsidering what happened the last time the railroads were nationalized, I doubt that's a very good idea.
- kevviiinn 4y agoWhich was what, exactly?
- jcranmer 4y agoEssentially, the US government undermaintained the railroads (the modern public transit scourge of "deferred maintenance" practiced a hundred years ago). It ran the railroads with a more or less single-minded mindset to supplying war goods, and after the war was over, kept a heavy touch on the railroads which made them unable to adapt to the increasing competition from heavily-subsidized highways and airlines, which combined with the headache of "deferred maintenance" meant that railroads suffered from about 1920 to 1980. (It wasn't until the failure of Penn Central that things really started getting better.)
- kevviiinn 4y agoAccording to the wikipedia article, Conrail actually inherited a terrible maintenance situation when the railroads bankrupted and were nationalized. Conrail then proceeded to manage maintenance and got things profitable. It was doing just fine when Reagan decided to privatize for some reason. Nationalizing actually fixed the situation so I don't kmow where you got the impression that it made things worse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail
- jcranmer 4y agoI'm talking about nationalization during WW1. Conrail didn't nationalize all the railroads (which did happen during WW1), just the bankrupt Penn Central.
- kevviiinn 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Railroad_Administration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Railroad_Admin... This one? Maybe I missed it in my brief skim but I don't see anything negative
- jcranmer 4y agoYeah. The Wikipedia page isn't all that great on this topic; I'm going off of my recollections from the book American Railroads, although it's been a few decades since I last read it.