If complaints about noise force the cannery to pull out, SBC
will hear another noise. It will be the sickening, sucking sound of
jobs leaving the county. Jobs we could very well keep will head for
business-friendly confines, just as they left Sunnyvale, Santa
Clara, San Jose, Gilroy, Watsonville and Monterey when canneries
there closed.
If complaints about noise force the cannery to pull out, SBC will hear another noise. It will be the sickening, sucking sound of jobs leaving the county. Jobs we could very well keep will head for business-friendly confines, just as they left Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose, Gilroy, Watsonville and Monterey when canneries there closed.
Do we want to make the same mistake as they did in those places or do we want to encourage agribusiness?
If the cannery closes, most of the freight revenue UP earns on servicing the Hollister Branch Line will end, so what reason will they have to keep the branch line open?
The law of rail line abandonment will allow them to start pulling up track after publishing a notice of their intention to do so in local newspapers.
Then, either somebody else will have to buy the line from UP or we will hear another sound, SBC’s last artery of commerce being yanked out and shipped to steel smelters in Japan or Korea. Then, there will be no rail alternative to local highways in SBC. Is that the silence we want for our children and future generations?
The alternative is to increase rail economic development on the Hollister Branch Line, starting with a team track for ag shippers and receivers. The freight-friendly provisions in the new federal legislation that will replace Transportation Equity Act for the 21st century next month, H.R. 2088, the Administration’s Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003 (SAFETEA) could provide the means to accomplish this. Will COG’s directors seize the opportunity or will they opt for silence?
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
