UP’s announcement that they are spending millions of dollars to
purchase 500 new refrigerated boxcars equipped with satellite
tracking devices, giving it a total of 5,500 reefer cars is bitter
news to SBC’s ag shippers. With the closest team track located in
Watsonville, SBC’s shippers of ag commodities who order a car to
load must truck their tonage over local highways to the loading
point in Watsonville, with all the extra expenses of hauling it
over-the-road. Not only does this place local ag at a competitive
disadvantage, it increases highway congestion, air pollution and
road maintenance expenses.
UP’s announcement that they are spending millions of dollars to purchase 500 new refrigerated boxcars equipped with satellite tracking devices, giving it a total of 5,500 reefer cars is bitter news to SBC’s ag shippers. With the closest team track located in Watsonville, SBC’s shippers of ag commodities who order a car to load must truck their tonage over local highways to the loading point in Watsonville, with all the extra expenses of hauling it over-the-road. Not only does this place local ag at a competitive disadvantage, it increases highway congestion, air pollution and road maintenance expenses. With Congress getting ready to relax the freeze on long combination vehicles, (i.e., triple-trailers), and already having loosened hours of service limits on commercial truck drivers, and very likely to harmonize gross vehicle weight at one of our NAFTA partner’s levels (either Mexico’s 108,000 lbs. or Canada’s 101,000 lbs.), one can easily picture what this means to highway safety advocates and motorists and what it will mean for local government road maintenance budget deficits. COG’s directors must be proactive, not reactive.
COG’s directors spend millions of taxpayers dollars on such things as bike paths and empty transit buses, they pay millions of taxpayers dollars for environmental studies of frogs, salamanders, newts, etc., but they ignore the benefits that a team track could yield. Both ISTEA and TEA-21 (and very likely TEA-21’s $387 billion successor legislation due by Feb. 29 when TEA-21 expires) provided for such private-public partnerships for increased rail economic development. When will COG’s directors wake up and plan transportation infrastructure improvements that capitalize on our private sector? Just imagine the jobs the COG’s directors could save our county. Caveat viator!
Joseph P. Thompson,
Tres Pinos
