The California Intercity Bus and Rail Anticompetition Law

I apologize for the lengthy title, but this is a hard one to explain concisely.

Amtrak, the national rail service, also operates many bus routes, for a variety of reasons. Some of these are feeder lines that carry passengers that live in towns too small to have train service. Some of these are supplementary buses that connect cities that also have rail service. Some of them are used to replace routes that have been suspended for technical reasons. And in a state like California, that is large and diverse in terrain, there are many Amtrak bus lines that go for hundreds of miles, such as the one between Arcata and Martinez.

But private bus companies (which meant Greyhound, mostly, and maybe some other charter bus companies) objected to these Amtrak routes being used for non-"feeder" purposes. Since Amtrak was subsidized by federal and state money, they said it was anticompetitive that a customer would be able to pay for a subsidized ticket between (for example), Eureka and Santa Rosa. And indeed, Amtrak's charter buses were cleaner, faster and generally more pleasant than what Greyhound had. So the California assembly passed a law that made it so that all Amtrak tickets had to have some rail component, no matter how small. So, for example, someone could not buy a ticket from Ukiah, California to Martinez, but would have to buy a ticket for a 2.5 hour bus trip from Ukiah to Martinez, followed by a 20 minute train trip to Richmond.

But, you might already be thinking. Once the rider had hopped off the bus in Martinez, what was to stop them from grabbing their bag and jumping in a cab or having a friend pick them up or taking one of the Bay Area's many different forms of commuter rail service? And if that idea has occurred to you, it has also occurred to many, many people who would buy "train tickets" that went unused.

Finally, just in the last few years, the law was repealed, although I don't know if the change has gone into effect yet. (The text of the law seems to suggest it will be by January 1, 2023). Probably the fact that the "just get off the bus" loophole was widely used is part of the reason for rescinding it. The other is that Greyhound, in general, has never been very good at providing the service that they claimed was the reason for the law.

For me, the law teaches a few important points. One is that laws can create perverse incentives that aren't foreseen---but really should be. Forcing people to buy tickets to places they don't want to go to avoid competition between the pubic and private sectors was a violation of economic and common sense. Another point about this is that some of the areas that suffered most from the law were areas that, in other states, would have had a lot of legislative pull. Sonoma County, for example, has about a half million people and in other states would have been a fairly large constituency. However, in California, it represents a little over 1% of the population, and thus was stuck with this annoying law for many years.

Also, as a final note: I can't tell what my title means. Is this a law against anticompetitiveness...or an anticompetitive law?