Off-wire light rail? Time was, not so long ago, that when I heard that phrase I immediately envisioned a light rail car that had accidentally got its trolley pole or pantograph off the overhead electric contact wire.
Rail industry cogitation focuses so far on Canadian Pacific’s (CP) prospects for securing Surface Transportation Board (STB) approval for its—at first friendly and now increasingly hostile—attempt to take over Norfolk Southern (NS). Unremarked has been the even-less predictable, but equally essential, attitude of Canada’s transportation and business regulators to a deal that would see one of the country’s two Class I’s disappear into the alphabet soup of American megamergers.
December 7, 2015: A day that will live in infamy for anyone attempting to follow the volley of legalese and rhetoric being tossed about by Canadian Pacific and Norfolk Southern as CP attempts to marry up with NS in what may be beginning to look more and more like a shotgun wedding officiated by The Rev. Bill Ackman.*
Levitation takes two forms among railroads—magnetic levitation relating to futuristic high-speed passenger transport, and stock levitation associated with bidding wars for asset control.
It’s official: Canadian Pacific on Nov. 17, 2015 sent an offer letter to Norfolk Southern proposing a merger (an acquisition, really) “that would create a transcontinental railroad with the scale and reach to deliver improved levels of service to customers and communities while enhancing competition and creating significant shareholder value.” On Nov. 18, CP, in response to NS’s tepid response to the initial offer, provided “full disclosure.”
Few obstacles bedevil railroads as has the Mississippi River. Spanning it was the nation’s first rail bridge in 1856—promptly assaulted by steamboat Effie Afton. While the bridge was repaired and more constructed, the river remains a problematic divide, separating, with few exceptions, eastern railroads from those operating in the West and producing grueling interchange bottlenecks at Chicago.
Reaffirmation by the U.S. rail and hazardous materials regulators of new rules for the movement of flammable liquids means operational migraines for railroaders, without actually addressing the underlying cause of crude oil exploding in transit.
Canada’s freshly elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, reached heavenward Nov. 4, 2015 in selecting the country’s new Transport Minister, former NASA Space Shuttle astronaut Marc Garneau. The 66-year-old Garneau was Canada’s first man in space, logging 677 hours during three flights between 1984 and 2000.
The U.S. House of Representatives, which I have grown fond of calling “The Society for Attaching Things to Other Things,” is scheduled to consider the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (a.k.a. the “Highway Bill”), H.R. 3763, and it has roughly three weeks to do something with it before H.R. 3819, the temporary extension for transportation funding, expires on Nov. 20.
Take a wild guess: Since the turn of the century, what nation has opened more new light rail and streetcar systems than any other on earth? Germany? Nein. Italy? No. China? 否. France? Non. Russia? Нет. Japan? いいえ. IThe Netherlands? Nr. It’s actually (drumroll please) . . . . . the United States of America.