Regarding your telephone call to United Pacific complaining
about the bumpy crossing on Highway 25 near Highway 101 (Red Phone,
Jan.8), I think it was unwise. What we should do is call UP and
thank them for:
Dear Editor,
Regarding your telephone call to United Pacific complaining about the bumpy crossing on Highway 25 near Highway 101 (Red Phone, Jan.8), I think it was unwise. What we should do is call UP and thank them for:
1. Keeping SBC connected to the North American rail network by keeping the Hollister Branch Line
2. Improving highway safety and lowering road maintenance expenses by providing an option to highways to the tonnage originating in our county
3. Spending more than $2 million to renovate the Hollister branch line, which very well could be abandoned because it is a one-shipper line
4. Bringing the commerce, business and jobs to SBC that rail-oriented economic development provides
5. Ignoring socialist Congressman Sam Farr’s call at his town hall meeting to “nationalize the railroads as part of homeland security” (even radical socialist Barbara Boxer has not made such a stupid remark), and nobody in Washington at the Transportation Law Institute knew any other congress man who supports Mr. Farr’s communistic idea
We should tell UP that:
1. We accept their industrial development department’s offer to increase rail-oriented economic development on the Hollister branch line
2. We apologize for the failure of SBC Council of Governments’ failure to give UP that courtesy of a reply to their invitation
3. We regret not having a rail-oriented site where the Economic Development Corporation’s recent client lead could have brought our county 150 new jobs, but pledge that we will immediately take action to get one ready the next time such an offer presents itself
4. We realize that axle weight is the single largest factor in road surface and bridge support deterioration, and that it takes 9,000 compact autos to make as much air pollution as comes from one fully-loaded big rig
5. In this county we appreciate, unlike our northern neighbor, the importance of private-sector transport solutions and COG voted unanimously to reject extending Caltrain to SBC, and that we support a railroad operation in the same manner as Southern Pacific originally brought here in the 1870s, with freight revenue providing necessary funds to offset losses sustained carrying passengers
The next call you make should be to COG’s directors, begging them, as I have, to reform SBC’s transport policy. Our largest industry and employer, ag, does not even have a team track in SBC where railcars can be loaded or unloaded, but we sure do have lots of empty buses and bike lanes that nobody uses – wasting taxpayers dollars. You waste time and newspaper space focusing on potholes, when you could be helping SBC improve economic development on the Hollister branch line. Caveat Viator.
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
