Transportation Regulators Are off the Rails, Again

Breitbard discusses railroad deregulation under the Staggers Act with Marc Scribner. 

Moreover, as Marc Scribner, transportation analyst at the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute (where this writer used to work) described in a coalition letter signed by more than a dozen policy groups, railroad deregulation under the Staggers Act “represents one of the most significant economic policy successes in in the history of the United States.”

The industry was over-regulated and flat on its back in the late-1970s, Scribner said. The last passenger line serving the East Coast had gone broke, replaced by an even less-efficient government operation – Amtrak. Freight traffic in the East had been loaded onto Conrail, another government entity, and the future of the industry looked bleak and government-owned.

But thanks to the Staggers Act, railroads rebounded. Major U.S. railroads in 2014 supported 1.5 million jobs, $274 billion in annual economic activity, nearly $90 billion in wages and $33 billion in tax revenues.

Read the full article at Breitbart.