Cases of Regulating Colorado Railroads: Excerpts from Decisions of the Public Utilities Commission, 1914-1953

This book presents excerpts from 40 years of Colorado Public Utility (PUC) decisions affecting 19 railroads and city street railways in the state. The decisions illustrate how the PUC reviewed, approved, or disallowed proposed actions of railroad management during the period when the railroads were a dominant presence in Colorado. The details and PUC analysis that informed its decisions provide an interesting commentary on the railroads of that era and evidence that will give readers a better understanding of: • the increasingly comprehensive nature of railroad regulation by the state during that time; • the procedural processes the Public Utilities Commission followed; • the expressed needs and demands of the “public” (consumers, businesses, and other organizations) that participated in PUC proceedings; • the rationale and arguments the PUC gave for its decisions and how it addressed the often conflicting interests of the parties before it, while seeking to promote “the public interest”; • specific facts about railroad operations throughout Colorado, including statistics regarding traffic, costs, and revenues on the routes they served; • the perspectives of railroad management charged with operating a profitable business; • conditions of social and economic life in rural Colorado; • the impact of the Great Depression on society and the railroads; • the rise of alternative means of transportation that directly competed with the railroads; • the impact of technology on railroad operations; and • the decisions of railroad management, faced with declines in both passenger and freight traffic largely dependent on Colorado’s mining and agricultural industries.