Beartooth Bob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> John Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I find this an interesting thread with the advent
> > of PSR. Someone posted recently that the STB only
> > regulates rates. No mention of railroads common
> > carrier obligation to ship anything.
> > ...
> > Can someone in the now shed light on the railroads
> > and the regulators current situation regarding
> > common carrier obligations? .
>
> Thank you John, this is exactly the conundrum I
> have been thinking about for years.<

There's really not much conundrum needed. Staggers for practical purposes deregulated railroads. There's still a hazy common carrier obligation in the background, but it's expressed mainly in STB's rate regulations. Railroads adjust their obligation by rates: if they don't want a particular traffic, they jack up the rates to where the shipper goes elsewhere. If the shipper can't go elsewhere, they will just have to pay a very high rate; in that case, if it seems abusive, the shipper can go to the STB for relief, which seems to be seldom granted (would love a reference to a competent study of how that works, if it works).

"Common Carrier" seems to be trotted out periodically by roughly 3 groups of people:
1) those with no skin in the game, promoting interesting political views;
2) railroads that are trying to raise rates and claim that they have to carry the traffic, but don't have to lose (or not make enough) money doing it; and
3) shippers who want to move traffic on a railroad, but don't want to pay what the railroad is asking.

And occasionally 4) mumbling arguments about how much money they lose running Amtrak trains.

FWIW, trucking at one time was a common carrier operation for the large lines. It isn't there, any more, either. Other modes, ditto. The great deregulation push in the 1980s-90s pretty much extinguished the idea within the US.