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British Columbia Railway A railway Derailed by Ruppenthal & Keast Hard Cover
The British Columbia Railway-A railway Derailed by Karl M Ruppenthal & Thomas Keast
Hard Cover
346 pages
Copyright 1979
CONTENTS
1 Chapter I Birth of the Royal Commission
17 Chapter II Some Historical Background
25 Chapter III The Evil Days
37 Chapter IV Financial Problems
43 Chapter V The Royal Commission Begins
47 Chapter VI The Operating Performance of the British Columbia Railway
99 Chapter VII The British Columbia Railway as an Instrument of Public Policy
129 Chapter VIII Financial Prospects for the British Columbia Railway under Several Sets of Assumptions - A Computerized Model
161 Chapter IX The British Columbia Railway Board of Directors
179 Chapter X Urgent! Emergency! The Fort Nelson Extension
235 Chapter XI A Previous Royal Commission
267 Chapter XII The Final Report
303 Chapter XIII Time for Decision
339 Chapter XIV Lest We Become Complacent
341 Appendix A
PREFACE
This is a story about dreams, visions, expansion, and reality. It is chiefly concerned with a railway - a relatively small carrier that serves a score of communities within a single province of Canada. It speaks of the importance of that railway to those communities, to its shippers, and to the economy of British Columbia.
For some time the British Columbia Railway expanded at a prodigious rate. It laid more main line track than did any other railway in North America. Its managers were men of vision. They could all but see the day when the BCR would become an integral link in a magnificent railway system that would extend from the northern reaches of Alaska to the Isthmus of Panama - and perhaps farther. And then there were problems.
There were construction problems, planning problems, money problems. There were labor problems, managerial problems, and political problems. Some problems resulted from inadequate planning, the hurried construction of branch lines, and over-reliance on borrowed money. Other problems resulted from political interference, inadequate staffing, and labor-management myopia. Taken together the problems became so large and so complex that a Royal Commission spent more than a year in an attempt to untangle them.
In straightforward and fairly simple language, that Royal Commission was given a tremendous task. It was asked to investigate all aspects of the railway and its management, to define the railway's problems, and to recommend appropriate solutions. That was a sizeable order, considering the fact that the railway's losses were on the order of $150,000 a day and each day growing larger. It was a big order, considering the fact that the railway had never really broken even and that there were enormous pressures that argued against its doing so. It was a big order, considering the fact that none of the members of the Royal Commission had ever worked for a railway - nor for any other type of transportation company, for that matter.
While the story of the British Columbia Railway and its Royal Commission is interesting in itself, it is the implications thereof that are really important. The British Columbia Railway is a provincial Crown Corporation. All of its stock is owned by the government of British Columbia on behalf of the people of the province. While the government of the day may technically be the railway's stockholder, it is the people who bear the brunt of the mistakes made and who pick up the tab when losses are sustained.
In this respect this crown corporation differs little from the other crown corporations in Canada, be they owned by the federal government or by one of the several provinces. It differs little from government-owned operations in the United States, in Europe, in Russia, or in Japan.
Some very fundamental questions are involved. Presumably there is some reason for the existence of crown corporations in the first place. Presumably railways and other enterprises are owned by governments in the non communist (and not admittedly socialist) countries of the world because of a presumption that the public interest can better be served through government ownership. Presumably there is a belief that more is involved than the commercial viaiblity of the enterprise: social benefits, regional development, or other non-economic benefits. There are some who hold that transportation enterprises need not recover their full costs because transportation is inextricably intertwined with the public interest.
That may be true. But if it is, how are we to measure the non-economic benefits which the railway provides? And how are we to determine whether it is efficient or wasteful, well operated or slovenly, truly beneficial or actually a predator?
How should the management and performance of crown corporations be measured and judged? Who can say whether the management of the Tennessee Valley Authority or CONRAIL or the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority is efficient or wasteful? What standards should be used? Are commercial (profit-oriented) standards appropriate? And if not, what standards should be used?
And how much freedom should the managers of crown corporations have to manage? How much concern on the part of government officials is appropriate (as representatives of the people, the ultimate stockholders), and when does that concern become political interference - unjustified and inimicable to efficient management?
Such questions as these are discussed in this book. We believe that they are important - important not only for the people of British Columbia (the owners of the B.C. Railway) but for taxpayers throughout the world who are the ultimate owners of an ever-increasing number of crown corporations, government-owned corporations, and "privately-owned" enterprises that are actually financed by one governmental unit or another.
The problems discussed herein are exceedingly important, and they are growing. They are by no means restricted to the province of British Columbia.
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