Dear Editor,
What a bunch of hypocrisy to say our leaders believe in “green commerce” for SBC.
We don’t have a team track where manufactures could unload raw materials, where growers could load Union Pacific’s new 5,500 reefer boxcars, or where a builder or contractor could unload lumber. COG has no plans to include one in the COG regional transport plan even though the nearest one is in Watsonville. COG’s directors won’t even summon a meeting of COG’s citizens rail advisory committee.
Consequently, tonnage and congestion and air pollution are caused, some of which could be prevented. COG’s directors have fallen for the “trap” of transit first “success” and a socialist, anti-motorist policy. Instead of promoting environmentally-friendly transport, or even just “standing on the sidelines” to allow private-sector transport to succeed, COG’s directors endorse boondoggle urban mass transit that forces motorists to pay 99 percent of the true costs of transit. This is bad government, and unsound and unsustainable transport policy. As they said to me each time I”ve visited the Office of Intermodalism at USDOT in Washington, D.C., “Where are more leaders?”
Anybody got any idea why COG’s directors have stonewalled UP’s Industrial Development Department for the past five years? As the grand jury said about VTA, I think that COG’s directors are hypnotized by “Emperor Transit First.”
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
