The Virginia State Rail Plan is a dangerous document. The Kaine administration report, prepared by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, lays out an intellectual justification for aggressive expansion of state planning and funding not only for commuter rail, as one might expect, but for freight rail.
The plan is dangerous because, if acted upon, it would transform Virginia’s private railroad companies – Norfolk Southern, CSX Corp., and any short lines that may do business here – into supplicants of the state. The politicization of Virginia’s freight rail system would encourage yet another special interest to raise PAC money to sway legislators, hire lobbyists to roam the halls of the state capital, and form business coalitions to persuade Virginians to part with hard-earned tax dollars to support another mendicant industry.
Some elements of the rail plan are worthwhile. It contains a cornucopia of data for public policy junkies, and it makes some worthwhile recommendations, such as acting to preserve abandoned rail corridors for possible future use. Even the emphasis on the critical importance of the privately operated freight rail is not entirely misplaced. Diverting more freight from trucks to railroads serves the laudable purpose of taking traffic off of Virginia’s increasingly congested Interstate highways.
But the report leaps from that last, uncontroversial observation to the unfortunate conclusion that it is the state’s role to accelerate that shift – implicitly assuming that market forces in the form of rising energy and congestion costs are not sufficient to induce the change. Arguing that railroads can help alleviate congestion on state Interstates, a goal that has widespread public support, the rail report proceeds to spell out how the state can help make it happen.
Here are key objectives spelled out in the report, listed under the goals of “Economic Competitiveness and Quality of Life” and “Virginia DRPT Public-Private Partnership Efforts and Program Delivery.”
Objective: Provide incentives for businesses to ship by rail whenever this is the most effective method available.
Future Strategy – Virginia DRPT should continue to connect businesses to rail and work to improve the overall freight rail system to improve its competitiveness and value against other modes. Virginia DRPT should track progress toward this objective by accounting for the value of freight traffic shifted to rail following the implementation of industrial connections and/or the improvement of main line corridors.
(Bacon: If shipping by rail is the “most effective method available,” why are incentives required?)
Objective: Promote continued dialog and cooperation between Virginia DRPT and the freight railroads to maximize system efficiency and investments.
Status – In addition to the support provided to Virginia’s short line railroads, Virginia DRPT is actively leading major investment studies involving public-private partnerships.
Future Strategy – Virginia DRPT should continue maintaining an open dialog with the private railroads and shippers to promote a unified vision of an efficient and competitive rail network for the Commonwealth.
(Bacon: In theory, public-private partnerships are a tool to induce railroads to make private investments with public benefits they might not otherwise make. But almost any project can be justified on the basis of public benefits– and you can be sure that railroad companies, once trained to seek state funds, will start identifying public benefits in everything they do.)
Objective: Secure stable and sufficient funding for a program of rail investment that will include funding for operating, constructing, and maintaining the rail network.
Status – Virginia DRPT administers several programs with generally continuous funding and advocates for additional funding for important strategic initiatives, including interstate corridor projects.
Future Strategy – Virginia DRPT should continue to advocate for increased and continuous investment in rail. Virginia DRPT should track its progress in securing funding by assigning a probability of funding to future projects.
(Bacon: Aaaargh!)
I will give the rail study credit for one recommendation not always heard in public policy circles: It advocates measuring “cost effectiveness of investments” in terms of air pollution reduced, traffic congestion ameliorated, etc. Unfortunately, such objective considerations are routinely ignored when a project has been turned over to the tender mercies of lobbyists and politicians.
To this point, the big rail companies have shown little interest in plundering the state purse. Once they are persuaded that it is easier and cheaper to financing their capital spending programs by hiring lobbyists and organizing PACs than taking their case to Wall Street, citizens and taxpayers will be the inevitable losers.