Opinion ID: 109122
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of Applicants' Fitness

Text: The applicants supported their service proposals with exhibits showing transit times over comparable distances on other routes. The appellees once again pointed out that the applicants had been selective and offered transit times on different routes served by the applicants that were substantially longer than those applicants proposed to provide on the routes at issue. Appellees thus argued that the applicants could not reasonably be expected to live up to their service proposals. In addition, the appellees cited service restrictions that the applicants practiced on other routesrefusal to make scheduled pickup of merchandise, refusal to handle shipments less than a certain weight, refusal to transport goods to certain destinations, and the like. The Commission attributed little significance to the appellees' rebuttal. With respect to transit times, the Commission noted that different highway conditions might make transit times over identical distances totally incomparable. 114 M. C. C., at 611. The District Court held that the Commission had acted arbitrarily in so treating the evidence, for it had apparently relied on the applicants' transit-time evidence ( id., at 586, 600) to support its finding of fitness. 364 F. Supp., at 1260-1261. Similarly, the District Court viewed as arbitrary the Commission's failure to mention in its opinion the service restrictions by applicants that appellees' had cited, since the Commission had relied upon identical restrictions practiced by appellees to support its finding that existing service was not satisfactory. 114 M. C. C., at 600. The Commission's treatment of the evidence of the applicants' performance on other routes is not a paragon of clarity. Had the Commission responded in a more considered manner to the evidence appellees presented, review would have been greatly facilitated, and further review by this Court perhaps avoided entirely. But we can discern in the Commission's opinion a rational basis for its treatment of the evidence, and the arbitrary and capricious test does not require more. The question before the Commission was whether service on the routes at issue would be enhanced by permitting new entry, and as to this the performance by prospective entrants on new routes was of limited relevance. The Commission noted with respect to transit times that different highway conditions might make experience there a poor indication of the times applicants could provide on the routes they sought to enter. More generally, the applicants' performance on other routes might, because of market conditions peculiar to that route ( e. g., the nature of demand for service, or the number of competing carriers), offer an inaccurate basis for predicting what the applicants would do if admitted to the routes they sought in competition with the carriers already there. A carrier performing lethargically on a route where it was the sole provider of motor transportation, for example, could ill afford to continue the same practice where the situation was more competitive. [5] The particular features of the applicants' performance elsewhere that the appellees cited were not shown by the Commission to be explainable by special market conditions on the routes where they occurred. It is said that the Commission could conclude that the evidence of performance elsewhere would be unlikely to prove dispositive, and that accordingly, absent some compelling demonstration by a proponent of a performance elsewhere study that it offered important predictive value, the Commission should disregard such evidence. [6] Of course, evidence of especially egregious performance elsewhere might have been viewed as an exception; a general assumption that competition would force new entrants to exceed the pre-existing quality of service in an effort to attract business might have to yield in the face of an applicant whose shortcomings elsewhere were many and flagrant. But no such evidence was offered here, and none of the applicants was so characterized. Indeed the examiners found that in the main the carriers participating in these proceedings are substantial and responsible carriers (2 App. 878), and no party has disputed this finding. We do not find the Commission's treatment of the evidence arbitrary.