Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on railroad abandonments, focusing on: (1) the amount of mileage railroads attempted to abandon; (2) shippers' and local officials' perspectives on the abandonment process; and (3) shippers' views on the effects of rail abandonments on their operations.
GAO found that: (1) railroads requested the Interstate Commerce Commission's (ICC) permission to abandon 36,900 miles of rail lines from 1970 through 1985; (2) ICC denied permission for 6.9 percent of that mileage; (3) while many factors influenced railroads' decisions to abandon rail lines, it could not determine the primary causes of abandonments; (4) protesters in abandonment proceedings were generally unaware of the various forms of assistance that ICC could provide to them; (5) protesters and state transportation officials opposed the ICC method of considering railroad opportunity costs in abandonment decisions; (6) many shippers believed that converting to other forms of transportation increased their transportation costs; and (7) abandonments have forced some shippers of bulk commodities to relocate their rail-dependent facilities.
