Dear Editor:
As we start 2003, I think that San Benito County’s leaders ought to thank the management of the Union Pacific for its generous gift to the county’s transportation infrastructure that the county received from the company last year.
At a time when bankruptcy after bankruptcy (e.g., Consolidated Freightways, United Airlines, etc.) bedevils the transportation industry, and with the state’s budget deficit at an all-time high and the nation’s somewhere near $250 billion, something very special happened to SBC when UP spent more than $2.1 million last year renovating the Hollister Branch Line, most of which lies in our county.
At $1,000/carload linehaul share of gross freight charges, it will take UP 2,100 cars to earn back this investment (or 21 years if SBC originates 100 carloads/year).
If the government owned the branch line, then SBC’s taxpayers would have had to dig into their wallets and purses and come up with $19,090,090.00 ($2,100,000.00 equals .11x) because SBC only gets back 11 cents for each dollar that we send to Sacramento.
Furthermore, if SBC owned the line, as some socialists have proposed, then the taxpayers of the county would also have had to buy the track and roadbed repair equipment to perform the track reconstruction and renovation work (estimated at $20 million, which would take SBC’s taxpayers $181,818,181.00 to send to the lunatics in our Legislature in Sacramento).
With leadership like those misguided socialists, it is no wonder that we have a budget deficit of $35 billion, on top of a state and local government debt burden (bonds, etc.) comparable with the national debt!
If nobody else is going to say it, then I say to UP’s management: Thank you!
They could have spent that money on countless other needs on their system. The jobs, commerce, trade, highway maintenance expense reduction, highway congestion reduction, tax revenue, and other benefits that flow to SBC from their decision deserves our everlasting gratitude.
Joe Thompson
Tres Pinos
