By Joe Thompson
Although Caltrans
‚ 20-year District System Management Plan (DSMP) has
well-written segments on the District’s unique geography and
demographics, I believe that its faults require that it be
rejected, returned to Caltrans and rewritten for the betterment of
our residents.
By Joe Thompson
Although Caltrans‚ 20-year District System Management Plan (DSMP) has well-written segments on the District’s unique geography and demographics, I believe that its faults require that it be rejected, returned to Caltrans and rewritten for the betterment of our residents.
As a 20-year plan for regional transport in our District, the authors’ many mistakes negate the draft’s positive portions, and therefore I do not believe that its inaccuracies justify its approval by our government. I recommend that its errors be corrected so that future District residents are not condemned to suffer the consequences of our mistakes.
Like all too many policy documents created by government employees, the draft DSMP:
n Fails to stress the importance of private-sector transport solutions
n Does not distinguish between legitimate functions of government – like building and maintaining infrastructure – from improper invasion of government into the private-sector industries, like carrying paying passengers
n Fails to mention the adverse social and economic consequences of nationalization of transport industry
n Lumps public-sector transit with road construction as legitimate government activities without revealing the extraordinarily expensive and inefficient practices of nationalized businesses
n Does not reveal or recognize the crushing tax burdens that socialist transit imposes on taxpayers
n Does not discuss the social inequities caused by socialist transit, like forcing small business and homeowners to pay 99 percent of fully amortized costs of public-sector transit riders and rides
For example, the draft plan extols public-sector passenger rail service like Amtrak and Caltrain, but never once admits that Amtrak is, in the words of Senator John McCain, a failed experiment, or that the Amtrak Reform Council has recommended it be discontinued, or that the president’s budget calls for an end to Amtrak’s taxpayer-paid subsidies (stacked in $100 bills, it would be taller than the former World Trade Center towers). No where in the draft plan do the authors disclose that it would be cheaper for taxpayers to transport Caltrain riders by limousine.
As a member of the San Benito Council of Government’s Citizens Rail Advisory Committee, and having personally witnessed COG’s Directors unanimous vote, our county is not “currently studying extension of commuter services via Caltrain,” another glaring mistake in the document. Our COG Directors rejected extending socialist passenger rail service from Gilroy to Hollister for the obvious reason that it would tax us into bankruptcy.
Conversely, I believe that our leaders do recognize that private-sector rail service is crucial to the future economic viability of San Benito County, and that we must increase rail-oriented economic development on the Hollister Branch Line to preserve it for future generations.
The authors of the draft mistakenly believe that sound, sustainable transportation can be found in nationalization of transport industries. Like many other public-sector employees, they are wrong in this belief, as can be seen by a review of the history of the last century. If they were right in their belief, then the USSR would have won the Cold War.
The authors of the draft are recommending the wrong answer to transportation Secretary Norm Mineta’s crucial question. The consequences of accepting their wrong answer to the crucial question can be seen in the massive state and federal budget deficits, the cutbacks to our schools and law enforcement. Since the private sector is much more efficient, the authors of the draft are recommending that we choose to worsen our government’s fiscal condition. Such wastefulness undermines the financial ability of our government to do its core functions – road construction and maintenance.
Having defeated the USSR, do the drafters of the DSMP want us to adopt failed Soviet policy?
While he was the Chairman of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, Mineta said to the annual meeting of the Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies at San Jose State University when I was there doing post doctoral study of transportation law and policy: “The crucial question in transportation today is what should government do? And what should it leave to others.”
I believe that our government planners must answer that crucial question with less expensive, more efficient, taxpayer-friendly, business-friendly private sector transport. If we select the nationalized route, we are planning the same trip that the Soviet planners did for the USSR.
While they recognize the need for restoration of intermodal facilities in the region, the DSMP’s authors appear ignorant of the parallel universe of private-sector transport, willing to condemn the automobile, blaming senior citizens “driving their gas guzzlers to Safeway” for causing highway congestion and air pollution. Yet our transportation planners on the Central California Coast have left Silicon Valley and Salinas Valley as the largest urban area in North America without an intermodal facility. I believe that it is our planners, not the District’s residents, young or old, who are responsible for the sad state of affairs we witness on our highways.
The CEO of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, former Assemblyman Jim Cunneen, described our Legislature as a battle ground between “transit dreamers” and “highway Luddites” during a speech at the Mineta Institute. The policy rupture he described is reflected in this document, in the state’s transport plans, in regional transport plans, and in counties’ transport plans including San Benito County draft regional transportation plan.
Until we repair the rupture, we will condemn our residents to the Purgatory (or is it Hell) of disavowing our American heritage of free enterprise, and worshiping the false god of Socialism.
Join me in asking COG’s Directors to reject the draft DSMP as inadequate for the Central California Coast Region. Caveat Viator!
Joe Thompson is a transportation lawyer, a member of the Council of Government’s Citizens Rail Advisory Committee and a resident of Tres Pinos.
