Railroad Deregulation Research Paper

Brilliant Essays
Railroad Deregulation in Europe and United States
Assignment:
By
Charmaine Silva
TLMT352 Distribution Systems
Dr. Carmen K. Mousel, PhD

Railroad Deregulation ins EU and US
Railways were the leading innovation in the early 19th century, and economic long cycle research (Ayres 1990) has argued it to have sullen the economic wealth in that time (industrialization, and especially steam power, iron and cotton textiles were the enabling factoring in the first approx. 55 year long wave). After the beginning of the 20th century the most relevant innovations, including diesel and electricity trains were invented, and finally put into mass production.
Railways in the whole world framework are under great change due to privatization and deregulation;
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Deregulation of this industry has changed the rule of the game in both the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). The service infrastructure has many interests involved and it is a for profit business. Therefore, some of the advantages of the deregulation are: increased competition, improved efficiencies, better level of services, lower costs, better communication infrastructure, and specialized cargo companies depending on the Intermodal Loading Unit (ILU). These improvements are based on demand and supply of specific geographical areas where volumes of ILUs is high and it is attractive to private investors to operate and this applies to EU and US. One of the downturns is that if in a certain geographical area there is not an attractive level of demand, there is no railroad link and cargo has to be moved by truck which is expensive and not environmentally friendly. Since this is now a for profit business, the investment required to build this type of infrastructure has to come with some warranties of …show more content…
(n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2011, from World Bank Organization: http://www.worldbank.org/transport/roads/rdt_docs/annex4.pdf
Slack, D. B. (n.d.). The Geography of Transport Systems. Retrieved December 17, 2011, from Rail Deregulation in the United States: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch9en/appl9en/ch9a1en.html
Konings, R., Priemus, H., & Nijkamp, P. (2008). Future of intermodal freight transport: operations, design, and policy. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar.
David N. Burt, S. D. (2010). Supply Management. In S. D. David N. Burt, Supply Management. New York, NY Mc Graw Hill-Irwin. Ayres, Robert U. (1990). Technological transformations and long waves. Part I,
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 37:1, pp. 1-37.
Gomez-Ibanez, Jose A. (2004). Railroad reform: An overview of the options.
Conference Proceedings of the Railway Reform (Madrid, Spain).
Whitehurst, C. H. & R. L. Clarke (2004). The coming North American rail mergers.
Research Report, Clemson University. Available at URL: http://www.strom.clemson.edu/publications/whitehurst/railmerger.pdf, Retrieved
July 7,

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