Clarification of Transportation - Policy Goals

Abstract

The basic principle of transportation policy should be adequate, efficient transportation at reasonable, non-discriminatory cost to users. Early railway growth in the age of great territorial expansion led to a chaos of rates and services, discriminatory treatment of users, and unfair wage and labor practices by the railroads. The original objective in the regulation of railway rates and services was to prevent monopoly and to assure fair competition among the railways themselves and among the communities and industries affected. This has been implemented, but with the constant effort to fix rates which yield "cost plus fair return" to the railways while still maintaining their public-utility function. The uneven railway rate structure thus produced has coupled with vast technological change and diversification in the transportation field to encourage an array of alternative means of transportation to flourish and compete with the railways for business. Certain governmental attitudes underlying regulation have placed railways at a disadvantage in the competition. Furthermore, railway corporations themselves have followed policies of curtailment of services and merger with competing lines. The time has come for a new look, with national scope, at transport conditions with a view to returning to the original objective of regulation to provide adequate service at fair rates and with maximum preservation of competition.