NCRA Rears Its [Ugly] Head
Once again, the North Coast Railroad Authority is in the news. Looks like the Califoria Transportation Commission is giving them something like $43 million for repairs of the rail line from Willits southward.
At first glance I thought the money would be for the line north of Willits to Humboldt Bay. Let's hope not. Why throw good money after bad?
But, not to be disappointed, reading further we see that the NCRA will be trying to get their piece of the pie of recently passed Prop. 1B. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up getting some of it- Millons of more dollars thrown into the bottomless pit of the Willits/ Eureka rail line.
This rail line sure has a life of its own. I don't know how functional the line is down in Mendocino and Sonoma counties, but Humboldt's line has ran its course, as far as I'm concerned.
Unless our line can magically come up with millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of cargo to make it worthwhile to maintain, we should just lay it to rest. I'll never understand the push to revive this rail line. Somebody must be making all kinds of money on it even without any traffic.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:18 AM
32 comments
32 Comments:
I use to love to take the train on 4th of July to Southern Humboldt... they would have a big B-B-Q at the station before heading back to Eureka
Of course Fred. The cabal is making millions of dollars from the rail line.
I'm so glad to see you've joined us.
Railroad? We have a railroad? Where? I haven't seen one train roll up here in almost a decade!
While you wax nostalgic and hurumpf about the eel river canyon, back up a second and think about connecting the communities of Humboldt to one another by rail. Arcata to Eureka, Fortuna, Scotia...it would be nice to see trains running around connecting people again to their whole community (instead of having to stay home in our little enclaves, isolated and alone).
I'm not isolated and alone. I own a car. If you don't own a car, ride the bus. Or are you too good for that?
public transportation sucks. Arnie should buy us all humvees.
Nobody listened when I was promoting my solar rail system concept that I came up with in 1976. Think of all the money poured down the drain in asphalt and highway crews constantly repairing 101 because big rigs tear up the roads. Cars don't do it. Big heavy trucks do it. And it costs us billions of dollars to keep up this faulty gas-guzzling oil guzzling, environment-polluting system going when a solar rail monorail system could be saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Easy to maintain monorails are up on piers with adjustable bases for land movement. No animals getting killed on the highways, free energy from the sun powering the solar rail system.
Without a railsystem out of Humboldt Bay our county's economy will be stuck in poverty land except for government handouts and gradual loss of stores as community ages and young people leave the area for work and housing.
"Without a railsystem out of Humboldt Bay our county's economy will be stuck in poverty land except for government handouts and gradual loss of stores as community ages and young people leave the area for work and housing."
What a load.
I suppose the many hundreds of millions it will take to get the rail back to Humboldt Bay isn't a government handout?
And tell about those young people leaving for jobs and why that isn't good for them. Of course retiring babyboomers don't spend as much as jobless 20 yearolds.
Creating a new monorail system is called building your society whereas paying through the nose for continuous repairs of asphalt roads and oil driven vehicles is called environmental stupidity.
You calculate how much it costs us taxpayers and car drivers to maintain the highway system vs. constructing a new monorail system like I say, on adjustable piers in dicey areas like that canyon that swallows up money for repairs, then come back and talk to us about "government handouts.."
This may be first time ever that I totally agree with what Steve Lewis has to say.
A couple weeks ago a railroad crossing sign myseriously appeared over the weekend at 2nd. and I St. I posted a pic. http://hucktunes.blogspot.com/2006/11/its-been-about-15-years-since-train.html
Dreamer.
Steve -- Forget your old, 19th century technology. What the government should be spending its money on is developing a modern teleportation thoroughfare between Humboldt County and the Bay Area.
Why waste all this time and energy on fossil fuel-based transportation when the subatomic processes of teleport technology offers a clean, environmentally efficient means of moving people and goods to and from the North Coast?
Of course, the so-called "progressives" are too busy bulldozing rural mountains and getting high on reefer to get behind a sensible, communitarian proposal such as this. Yet another dream they've stymied, for whatever sinister reason.
Or jet packs, maybe. At least give us jet packs. I've got some designs right here...
I already travel without leaving Eureka. I go to Has Beans.
Yeah, Has Beans is quite cosmopolitan.
Real smart and smarmy, Hank. Why don't you try thinking ahead for a change instead of slinging crummy thoughtless put-downs at people trying to solve problems in the community. You're in a position of social responsibility. Act like it.
Ah, do what you want, Hank. That's my frustration with you talking for your rag not taking me seriously over the years when I brought up environmental protection issues that you guys never touched for political reasons as far as I can tell. Example? Homestead subdivision development eco-damage which still hasn't seen the light of day in local newspapers yet the information is well known in environmentally concerned circles.
Newspaper editors are down there below lawyers in a writer's short list of those worthy of eternal roasting in hell, so don't feel bad that I find yours and other local newspaper editors politicizing news to be contemptible occupations listed in the yellow journalism pages of our phoney books.
No Steve: Tell was you really think.
OK -- I'm sorry, Steve. That last post was rude of me. I just wish that rail people -- to say nothing of monorail people -- would give some thought to the feasiblity of such projects.
So if the rail depends on the shipping into Humboldt Bay and and the Hardbor depends on the rail... what are the prospects now that Coos Bay is negotiating a deal with an international shipping company to bring conatainer shipping there? The channel there is 47 feet now (vs 42 here), there is rail access and 800 acres of port owned property in the deal. Seems like they might be beating us to the punch and they already have most of the infrastructure.
"So if the rail depends on the shipping into Humboldt Bay and and the Hardbor depends on the rail...".
Except all the harbor traffic whe have now is going on without the rail. Not saying that's a good thing, in and of itself, but suggesting it would be better if subsidized, at hundreds of millions of dollars, is out there.
"So if the rail depends on the shipping into Humboldt Bay and the Harbor depends on the rail...".
Before you make that statment again, read the 2003 Humboldt Bay Revitalization Plan. Start with the Executive Summary.
http://www.humboldtbay.org/harbordistrict/documents/
Also, if you really think that our rail system is going to be used for a public (people) transportation or a monorail sometime in our lifetime, you are way out of touch. The federal government will never ever be interested in spending hundreds of millions so the extremely small population Humboldt County can ride a train anywhere. We are last in line for that. If you believe it will then I don’t know why you wouldn’t think teleportation was also feasible.
And yet you consider my proposed teleportation system an insult to your intelligence, when if fact it's every bit as real as a statewide solar-power monorail system. Or any solar-powered monorail system at all.
So Steve, Fred Chien said, regarding the Chinese, "they look at Humboldt Bay and see no deep port development"? are you sure?
Why would they?
hehehe....Maybe we could harness the moonbeams during the night for the monorail.
I love it when people come up with ideas that they have no clue what it would take to engineer/design, let alone maintain.
Solar power on the scale Steve is talking about is as bad for the environment as a regular train would be. Not to mention the cost.
Derchoadus said...
Solar power on the scale Steve is talking about is as bad for the environment as a regular train would be.
Imagine all the capital and manufacturing, as well as the resources of heavy metals and plastic, plus all the oil that would have to be burned in order to switch over to solar power on a large scale. The old equipment would become just so much rubbish to be shipped to India for recycling. I'm sure there are many manufactures that would love to get the contracts.
Well, if the damage to the roads is being caused by large trucks-for the most part the large trucks I have seen are logging or wood processing transport/corporate merchandising.
It seems to me that both of these parties would hold benefits in investing in this Monorail idea but, mebbe I just don't know whats up...
The truckers pay more licence fees but I doubt if it offsets what they destroy. It's the weight of the trucks that does it. Cars can go for years and years on the same roads without them getting pot holes, etc.
I'm thinking if there were monorail systems in place of major highways, well there's a lot of land that becomes freed up if the old roadbeds are gone. The State sells that land to farmers in the ag valleys, to tree farmers in the forested areas, to ribbon city and strip-mall developers in already urban and suburbanized areas. The land sales or leases, pay for the construction of the monorail systems.
In case some are gasping, I have another system for creating greenbelts along all the creeks and rivers throughout urban and suburbanized areas. "Climax Corridors", biological corridors where the native trees and vegetation are allowed to go to their natural climax stages, no commercial development allowed, so that the creeks run clear even within city limits and the animals can get through human development without being killed. Greenery along the sides of the creek banks filters run-off waters.
It's more like RCAA and my thanks to all you fools who voted for Bass ( ass ) and Levallee so we can get some more half way houses in our white trash town .
Dead thread but I can't help myself:
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
-JMan
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