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Jim Barthold
Recently, I drove over an abandoned railroad crossing, complete with rusted tracks, high weeds and corroding warning lights.
A romantic person would have conjured images of the days when smoke-belching locomotives crammed with wide-eyed tourists would scream past on their way to Southern New Jersey resorts along the Atlantic Ocean. Hours later, those same trains, loaded with tired and sunburned but imminently content riders, would shriek past in the opposite direction, carrying the passengers toward homes and jobs in the Philadelphia area. Residents working in nearby fields would stop in their work, wipe their sweating brows and wave to these visitors from afar.
That's what a romantic person would see. I, on the other hand, know the story of this abandoned railroad crossing. It's not romantic.
That crossing was at the epicenter of a situation that caused the governor of New Jersey - a Democrat - to visit all-Republican-and-proud-of-it Cape May County in 1978.
It started, I guess, when the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Line decided it didn't want to run seashore service anymore. Hearings were held, and a privileged handful of commuters who enjoyed the idea of living at the seashore and working in the city held out for continued rail service. PRSL, as was the case with many public transportation agencies at that time, resisted but eventually gave in.
In the end, it was agreed the trains would transport the small group of commuters to a Philadelphia connection in the mornings and bring them back in the evenings.
That's it: two trains a day, one up, one back. If you missed either, you had better have some other way to make the 75-mile trip.
I emphasize two trips because a motorist was slammed at the crossing by one of the evening trains. Everyone was caught up in the tragedy of young lives snuffed out in a collision of diesel metal and automobile tin.
The story made headlines - for about two days. That's when a second motorist ventured onto the tracks at exactly the same time of day and was nailed by yet another shore-bound train.
Forget the coincidence. Government intervention was needed. Voila! There was Democrat Gov. Brendan Byrne standing on Dennisville Road remarking, "I don't see what the problem is. You have electric."
Trust me, that comment, while seemingly naive, was not odd if you'd ever seen Dennisville. Anyway, the state put up the lights, and motorists knew to stop when trains came through.
That railroad crossing is emblematic of what the telecommunications industry is feeling these days. There is, on one side, an irresistible urge to merge, perhaps creating wealth for a privileged few while dislocating scores of always-unimportant little people. Of course there's always the potential for higher prices and reduced services for consumers - as if that makes much business sense.
The mergers, the companies insist, must happen if companies are to compete in the global marketplace and continue an innovative path.
Bullfeathers, reply justifiably-concerned consumer groups.
Government lawyers are more than agreeable. Paid only public servants' wages - which aren't bad - they show these corporate monsters that the U.S. won't sit back and let them rule its economy.
At least that's how it looked when telecommunications giants Sprint and WorldCom talked of merging. The government, wary of yet another telecom behemoth joining AT&T and the congealing Baby Bells, threatened legal action to block the merger. Sprint and WorldCom, snarling at the inconvenience, backed off at the flashing lights.
"I believe we're on a track that is extremely ominous for the communications world," grumbled Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom's president/CEO.
Despite Ebbers' insistence to the contrary, there are some sour grapes there. On the other hand, the man has a point. Is it the government's responsibility - or even job - to protect the public from companies whose mergers may or may not improve telecommunications services? Is it, for that matter, the government's responsibility to install warnings to protect people from trains that only run twice a day?
I don't know. I only know that two years after New Jersey erected warning lights at that rural train crossing, the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Line discontinued service, claiming there wasn't enough ridership. After that nobody had to worry about getting hit by the trains.
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