June 30, 2005
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Ports,
rails, trails
by JUDY HODGSON
Our cover story last week was
titled, "Port of call: Shipping on Humboldt Bay -- can we
build it, will they come?"
The headline, of course, was
a spoof of the 1989 baseball movie, Field of Dreams, where
farmer Kevin Costner builds a ballfield in his Iowa corn patch
out back to honor his old, long dead heroes. At the end of the
movie, all these guys come out of the tall cornstalks and play
ball. Good, sappy movie. Not very believable.
Neither is the prospect of the
port of Humboldt Bay becoming a major player in containerized
shipping on the Pacific Rim, providing hundreds of good-paying
blue collar jobs. Besides, has anyone really studied the impacts
of a brightly lit, noisy, 24-hour freight transfer facility which
would vastly increase (a) truck traffic through Eureka and/or
(b) tie up traffic through railroad crossings and throughout
Old Town Eureka with slow-moving freight traffic?
Also, not very credible are
the folks who keep lobbying for more public funds to rebuild
the railroad through the Eel River Canyon. It's not going to
happen and the main reason is there are no customers for freight
shipping. They have all found alternatives these past seven years
the railroad has been closed -- and it was notoriously unreliable
when it was open. (If you missed that Journal cover story
--"Going nowhere," May 29, 2003 -- it's on-line.)
For another opinion on the railroad
prospects, please read Dan Walters' Sacramento Bee column
on Monday (www.sacbee.com), "An example of why the state
Legislature is a dysfunctional mess." Walters rips Senate
Bill 792 (Sen. Wes Chesbro), which would redirect $5.5 million
in state funds, originally set aside to repay a federal loan,
toward operational expenses for the North Coast Rail Authority.
Walters recounts the history
of the NCRA and how it became a public entity in 1989, at a time
when many other private short lines across the country were being
abandoned.
"Tens of millions of dollars
have vanished down this rathole [the NCRA], although in 1998,
as he was ending his governorship, Pete Wilson vetoed one $2
million appropriation that supposedly would be spent to clean
up the NCRA's hopelessly tangled accounting system.
"'(Wilson's) staff told
my staff that the railroad was ill-conceived, bankrupt and not
worth throwing good money after bad,' the legislator who had
gotten the $2 million approved, Sen. Mike Thompson, told the
Santa Rosa Press Democrat."
I am reminding readers of the
slim chances of success of those pinning their economic hopes
on rail and port development because this type of intransigence
can impact other important public projects.
I hope as you read this
week's cover story, "(T)rail: which way 'round the bay,"
you may come to the same conclusion I did:
Let's get going on using the
railroad right-of-way for a multiple-use, non-motorized paved
trail. The Hammond Trail in McKinleyville is nothing short of
a wild success. Any day of the week you will see joggers and
dogs, bicyclists, families with tricycles and strollers in a
parade of humanity getting healthy exercise along the spectacular
coastline. If we had a safe, non-highway trail, Eurekans could
take their kids and a backpack, and bike to the Saturday farmers
market on the Arcata Plaza. Arcatans could travel in safety to
Old Town Eureka for lunch and to visit the Boardwalk. How about
some entrepreneurial type starting up a rickshaw service between
the two cities?
As you read the story you will
also learn that rail-to-trail conversion will not preclude a
tourist train on the bay. One consultant inadvertently recommended
an Arcata-to-Samoa run at a fraction of the cost of Eureka-to-Samoa.
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