The railroad industry faces stiff competition from publicly subsidized trucks and barges. Despite the inherent cost and operating advantages of railroads, trucking companies continue to handle a large percentage of the freight volume in Minnesota. Residents of our state need to get behind the formation of a state/national freight transportation policy. Such a policy would contain the following elements:

• A way to allocate costs fairly to the motoring public to recover the true costs of highway maintenance and river channel dredging.
• A conceptual way of thinking where residents of our state view freight railroads as an integral part of our state transportation system.
• Articulate to state policy makers that it makes sense to preserve freight rail corridors, especially in growing urban areas of the state, where freight volumes moving via rails reduce highway congestion, safety hazards, and energy consumption per ton/mile of freight transported.
• Achieve equity in funding to railroads to overcome decades-old public subsidies to the trucking and barge industries, which have diverted traffic away from railroads, increased maintenance costs for highways, and caused a large demand for foreign oil in our state.