Publisher's Synopsis
"The Army relies on commercial rail carriers for off-post rail movements, but it currently has three business models for on-post rail operations: government owned, government operated; government owned, contractor operated; and privatized. In this report, the authors evaluate the three business models and determine whether greater reliance on commercial rail assets could meet Army rail needs at a lower cost. As part of this research, they gathered data on Army rail requirements, costs, and performance at installations with deployable units and visited one installation of each type to obtain insights on the differences between the business models. The authors then developed an approach to compare the costs and risks of the three business models across installations. Finally, they estimated potential savings from privatization and determined possible risk factors, such as a decrease in responsiveness to short-notice deployments, loss of s
