Recent events suggest that the marketing of railroad services, if some thing less than aggressive, is not wholly devoid of ideas to meet new competitive situations. Several significant departures from traditional ratemaking practices have been proposed, and, having been to a degree accepted by a more enlightened Commission, have stemmed diversion and brought new traffic to the rails. It is the purpose of this book to examine two of these pricing techniques, the multiple-car and the conditional (aggregate volume and contract) rate, to explore their economic rationale, and to gauge their effect upon the revenues of a selection of proponent carriers and their implications for the viability of the industry at large.
Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Washington State University ; Study No. 44