That is the sort of talk that generally brings confidence, and with confidence, hard-cash loans. Our railroads might try a hand at it. If they should come with some pretty definite plans for the extension of electrification upon their properties, the modernization of their terminals, a better correlation between their service and those of the carriers upon the highways, the real development of the container system, better signaling, and all the rest of it, they might command better credit. Such things have happened. It is not unlikely that they would happen again.
There is one economy, however, that requires little or no plant expenditure--only vision for its introduction. All this while and I have not even touched upon it, the supreme economy which our national transport system may yet hope to accomplish.
For more than three quarters of a century we have had a great god in our American railroad policy--when we have had an American railroad policy. That god has been labeled "Competition." That he is a false god I should not be rash enough to say, for he is a very popular one, whose dignity is not rashly to be trifled with. But like some other forms of monarch, no matter how popular they may seem to be, he is a very expensive piece of property. Heresy? Not a bit of it! Listen to me.
On the outskirts of Vancouver, British Columbia, two great railroad passenger-stations stand cheek by jowl. Each would easily serve a European city of half a million population. Stated in railroad terms it would not be difficult to operate from thirty to fifty passenger-trains each day in and out of either of them. Yet neither of these is the main passenger-station of Vancouver--that is the Canadian Pacific terminal down on the water-front, at which arrive and depart more than half of the trains that enter and leave Vancouver each weekday. At one of these two outer stations, that of the Great Northern, three trains enter and three leave each day: at its neighbor, that of the Canadian National, but two are operated in each direction. One can only guess at the overhead and operating coast for each passenger who uses these architectural extravagances. At the Union Station, in Washington, where monumental construction is a bit more justified, this cost for each through passenger is now thirty-four cents. The railroads that run in and out of our Federal capital must carry their passenger a considerable distance before they equalize and overcome this high terminal charge and begin to make a profit upon him.