The Growing Case For Nationalizing Railroads | Kari Lydersen | TMR

Sam and Emma host Kari Lydersen, journalism lecturer at Northwestern University and staff writer at Midwest Energy News to discuss her recent piece at In These Times entitled “The Case for Nationalizing the Railroads.” Kari Lydersen then joins as she dives right into the recent era of mass consolidation in the US freight rail industry alongside a shift towards “precision scheduling” that emphasizes efficiency, sidelining track segments, lines, and jobs that they saw as unprofitable, before parsing deeper through who this “efficiency” actually serves (the C-suite), as it undercuts the workforce, leaves shippers entirely at the whims of the rail companies when it comes to scheduling, and ultimately leaves these companies as shells of their former selves. Next, Lydersen, Sam, and Emma assess the massive boom in profits that the freight rail industry has seen over the last decade and a half, before wrapping up the interview by tackling what a nationalization of the freight rail industry would entail, and why it’s actually a lot more feasible than it might sound.

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I want to Welcome to the program Kari Lydersen. She's a journalism lecturer at Northwestern University. staff writer at Midwest Energy. writing in In these times: the case for nationalizing the railroads. Carrie thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Let's just start with where we are with the railroads in this country in terms of and we're talking about Freight rail. I think people would be surprised to know how Consolidated this industry is and how much money they have begun to make in terms of profits. and how like I guess I mean the thing that struck me in reading your piece I mean some of the stuff I knew some of it. I didn't but it's what struck me is how much of a dramatic change we've had really in the past decade or two with these Freight railroads. and how much like the quality of what they do has gone down. hmm yeah exactly. and I think that was one of the biggest Revelations for me, starting to delve into this topic in the past couple years. You know, covering labor like it's no surprise that workers are treated badly and you know corners seem to be cut on safety and a lot of this you hear in all different Industries. but one thing that is really striking with the situation with the railroads is how the service is just breaking down too. and how the companies that are shipping on the railroads are getting more and more frustrated and feeling that it's just dysfunctional and you know even as the freight railroads become more and more profitable they're not actually serving you know they're definitely the workers are definitely unhappy for all sorts of reasons. we can talk about and they're also just not doing a good job of fulfilling the actual function that you know they were granted all these many hundreds of millions of acres of land you know 150 years ago and that they've gotten all these concessions from the government to to be this common carrier that carries our freight and they're really not living up to that promise either.