Frank_Lee
Active Member
I think it's not so clear that North American freight railways are superior to Russian ones as this pile on suggests. Yes, private sector management is generally far more efficient than state stewardship. However, it's reasonable to argue that the short term mindset of managers (whose tenure is short compared to the lifetime of the enterprises they operate) has consequences in the railroad domain just as it does in many other industries. It's quite common to see excessive attention paid to explicit costs (e.g. maintenance, cost of new infrastructure) as opposed to implicit or intangible ones (e.g. lost market share) in ways that are detrimental to the business. It seems pretty clear that North American railroads also aren't interested in the kinds of risk taking that might really transform their business---e.g. electrification, tunneling under the rockies, etc. It may well be that all of these ideas have been thoroughly costed out and investigated but it surprises me a great deal that none of the CEOs of the class one railroads talks about much beyond efficiency and intermodal (unless I'm greatly mistaken). Hunter Harrison was a brilliant guy, but that doesn't mean his way of running a railroad is the only way to make it immensely profitable.
