The government shutdown this fall offered a stark lesson in resilience — or the lack of it. Essential transportation sectors dependent on federal employees slowed to a crawl. Air travelers faced long delays as TSA officers and air traffic controllers called in sick. Pipeline inspections, port clearances, and safety monitoring paused or operated under strain.

Meanwhile, privately owned freight rail continued to operate. Trains moved. Supply chains remained fluid. Freight customers saw little disruption. This was no stroke of luck — it was the product of private capital, disciplined management and performance incentives aligned toward reliability, regardless of political drama.

The lesson is simple: When operations depend on government staffing and appropriations, fragility grows. When operations depend on the private sector, resilience grows.

During the shutdown, TSA absenteeism surged. Air traffic controllers, legally barred from striking, nonetheless reached fatigue limits that forced reduced capacity. These are critical functions, yet the structure ensures vulnerability every time Congress fails to fund the government.

Contrast that with freight rail. Even under political and operational pressure, railroads have invested in automation, predictive maintenance, distributed power, and network optimization. They have consistently delivered more with fewer workers while improving safety. Federal regulators, however, attempt to freeze this progress with outdated mandates — such as the two-person crew requirement — despite technology making single-operator freight trains safe and viable. A federal takeover or expanded micromanagement would calcify outdated practices and slow safety innovation.

The administrators of the rail-regulating alphabet soup — STB, FRA, FTA and others — were not necessarily on the job during the shutdown, yet the trains kept running without federal oversight.

This resilience is not hypothetical. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, private freight rail networks continued to make deliveries despite the immense challenges posed by the virus. Rather than exploiting the crisis, rail companies carried essential goods — chemicals for medicine, food packaging, disinfectants, energy supplies and more — demonstrating that market incentives can produce socially valuable outcomes without heavy-handed, pre‑emptive regulation.

We are not out of the woods. A government shutdown could return as early as January.

The solution is clear: Essential transportation functions should move out of federal operational control and into private or independent structures that insulate them from political volatility. Modern security screening can be contracted. Air traffic control can be shifted to nonprofit, independent models, as successful examples abroad demonstrate. Freight rail should be allowed to modernize crew requirements and embrace technology, rather than remain trapped under regulatory tradition.

The recent shutdown exposed a fundamental truth: Resilient systems endure when politics fails.

Roslyn Layton is executive vice president of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy/InsideSources