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Re: Biased Judges - Federal Shutdown of FRA
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 01-26-2008 - 13:01
So the will of the people, as already expressed by an elected state legislature, lawfully creating the NCRA and various joint powers boards to keep the railway in operation; is again thwarted by an unelected two-bit marin county superior court judge. So what is new here? Is this really news worthy!
Why do you think these extremist lefties pick their court venues in the the first place, filing and refiling until they get a judge biased in their favor. Since the government and regulation of interstate commerce is constitutionally a federal matter, the question of the adequacy of any environmental impact statement will end up in federal court. It should have started there; Judge Ritchie's failure to declare his own lack of jurisdiction, proving his own bias. Again, so what else is new.
As to the extremist Novato NIMBY notion that any environmental law has ever been written that protects their backyards from being disturbed by noises or traffic or the commercial activity of their neighbors (such as a railroad); they are NUTS! So what else is new.
Environmental laws were written to protect the natural environment from "unmitigated" adverse effects of man's activities - mitigate them, then go and do pretty much anything you want! To anyone who has honestly observed the relative enviromental impacts of highways vs railroads; or cars and trucks vs trains, it is obvious that the railway (in any form) is many times over the best way to mitigate our adverse impact upon the natural environmental. It is also very obvious that the Novato Nutcase extremists aren't really interested in protecting the environment at all, but only in abusing environmental laws to their own ends. Again, so what else is new.
It is true that local ordinances (such as zoning) have been written to protect the "Backyard environment", but the federal courts have consistantly ruled that in the case of railroads, federal law preempts all local and state laws. Cities, counties, and local courts simply have no jurisdiction. But Judge Ritchie shows his bias anyway. So what is new here!
It ain't hardly over!
*************************
Since I have seen very little factual information (here or anywhere) as to what actually shut down the NWP in the first place (imagine, a government owned entity shutting down due to failure!), I have recently been doing some research in my spare time (what little I have).
So far, I have found that its shut down was not due directly to commercial failure, as so many here have assumed. It is however highly possible that such a commercial failure contributed, though I have not yet found specific evidence of such (still looking). What I did find was a Federal Railway Administration "Emergency Cease and Desist" order, requiring a sudden and abrupt shutdown; which of course left many railroad customers, connections, equipment owners, and a whole regional ecomomy in a lurch. Btw, the order does allow movements of work trains and equipment and on a case by case basis, other movements.
According to this order, it was given in direct response to an obviously "wanton disregard of public safety" by the operating contractors to the NCRA and various joint powers boards that own the tracks. This action occured after the FRA and the CPUC repeated had attempted to work with the contractors to mitigate several hundred very serious safety violations (violations of federal law) in that:
30% percent of grade crossing signals were completely inoperative for months at a time and that no signals at all were ever in compliance with legally required maintenance;
every mile of track contained at least two locations where the condition of the track was so bad that "track failure and derailment was imminent" (rotted ties, unspiked rails, loose joint bars, washed out ballast, etc)- not even close to compliance with lowly class 1 standards (not even PennCentral could break even running at 10mph, but Conrail did make money after fixing the track);
vegetation was not controlled as required by law, such that the risk of fire to wooden structures such as culverts, bridges, trestles was very high, and that vegetation at grade crossings created visability problems, posing "a grave hazard to the public";
the contractor failed to properly maintain drainage systemwide, such that the r.o.w. was at continual risk of washout - then when mandated did it improperly, so as to aggravate the washout risk and also cause flooding to neighbors (washout was indeed a cronic problem - caused by improper maintenance);
no locomotive on the property met the maintenance requirements set forth by the FRA; also every single locmotive had defective or inoperative brakes or brake controls;
an inadequate number of maintenance workers were employed - just two signal maintainers for hundreds of miles of track, no full time track workers, and few mechanics, and none of the above technically qualified according to national industry standards for their jobs.
And the last straw: the contractors had no training programs for operating or maintenance employees until threatened and forced into it by the FRA and CPUC - but they then dropped the training after only one session, triggering the "emergency shutdown order" just a week or so later.
How appalling is this! Of course, as mentioned in the emergency order, it was the operators contractual duty to properly maintain the track, but it did not do so. Regardless of economic concerns, how can any operator (human being) be so incompetent or so stupid as to allow such a failure to continue, without blowing the whistle for help, warning that he can't afford to or is otherwise unable, to maintain even to class 1 track standards. The smoking gun here was the chronic lack of qualified employees. Without them, no one could have done a proper job; thus it was NOT done! Of course qualified employees cost money, but not that much more than unqualified ones.
There is no excuse for any of this! Of course, whenever "stupidity" doesn't adequately answer the question, that leaves corruption as the answer. How many times in railroad history has someone come in to fleece the industry, taking the money and running (anyone ever hear of the "Credit Mobilier" scandal that nearly destroyed the first transcontinental railroad). Now geewhiz, if I don't pay anyone to do maintenance, I can pocket that money too!
Of course, the question begs - where were the track owners, the NCRA and the various joint powers boards, in all this. Why did they fail to protect their (and the public's) interest in seeing to it the the operating contractor honored its commitments. Why weren't the operators sued to enforce the contract or to replace those failed contractors. Perhaps the FRA would have stayed its hand had they gotten involved to correct the problem.
Did the Espee deliver the property in this bad condition after voluntarily offering it for sale (it was their idea)? If so, why did the state pay for it - Espee should have paid the state to take it off its hands - such as in the case of Amtrak.
Three things in hindsight seem apparent here: that the hodgepodge of NCRA and various joint powers boards may have been an unworkable arrangement, stymieing all; that the track owners must assure that any operating contractor be capable and qualified; that the track owners, given their state mandated charters to keep rail service alive, should contract out all track maintenance directly on their own. I think they finally are directly contracting the track maintenance out on their own, and should continue to do so.
But of course, even though railroad maintenance activities (even deferred maintenace) generally have not historically required EIRs, the biased judge says the voluntarily filed EIR may be inadequate. NCRA shouldn't have filed anything! What a hellacious precedent that would be - EIRs for maintenance - now there is extremism at its finest!
I for one, continue support the effort to restart the railway; though it seems the state legislature does need to re-organize its ownership. For environmental and esthetic reasons, and for the fact that, given the economic realities of our times, we cannot continue to rely solely upon the highway as a mode of transportation - anywhere; public involvment in such efforts is essential to our continued prosperity.
Since I have always believed in this concept, I long ago went to for in rail transportation as a design engineer. But I realize that despite the many successes of public involvement in rail tranportation, many people still have doubts. But hey! No great thing was ever accomplished by listening to naysayers!
OPB
Why do you think these extremist lefties pick their court venues in the the first place, filing and refiling until they get a judge biased in their favor. Since the government and regulation of interstate commerce is constitutionally a federal matter, the question of the adequacy of any environmental impact statement will end up in federal court. It should have started there; Judge Ritchie's failure to declare his own lack of jurisdiction, proving his own bias. Again, so what else is new.
As to the extremist Novato NIMBY notion that any environmental law has ever been written that protects their backyards from being disturbed by noises or traffic or the commercial activity of their neighbors (such as a railroad); they are NUTS! So what else is new.
Environmental laws were written to protect the natural environment from "unmitigated" adverse effects of man's activities - mitigate them, then go and do pretty much anything you want! To anyone who has honestly observed the relative enviromental impacts of highways vs railroads; or cars and trucks vs trains, it is obvious that the railway (in any form) is many times over the best way to mitigate our adverse impact upon the natural environmental. It is also very obvious that the Novato Nutcase extremists aren't really interested in protecting the environment at all, but only in abusing environmental laws to their own ends. Again, so what else is new.
It is true that local ordinances (such as zoning) have been written to protect the "Backyard environment", but the federal courts have consistantly ruled that in the case of railroads, federal law preempts all local and state laws. Cities, counties, and local courts simply have no jurisdiction. But Judge Ritchie shows his bias anyway. So what is new here!
It ain't hardly over!
*************************
Since I have seen very little factual information (here or anywhere) as to what actually shut down the NWP in the first place (imagine, a government owned entity shutting down due to failure!), I have recently been doing some research in my spare time (what little I have).
So far, I have found that its shut down was not due directly to commercial failure, as so many here have assumed. It is however highly possible that such a commercial failure contributed, though I have not yet found specific evidence of such (still looking). What I did find was a Federal Railway Administration "Emergency Cease and Desist" order, requiring a sudden and abrupt shutdown; which of course left many railroad customers, connections, equipment owners, and a whole regional ecomomy in a lurch. Btw, the order does allow movements of work trains and equipment and on a case by case basis, other movements.
According to this order, it was given in direct response to an obviously "wanton disregard of public safety" by the operating contractors to the NCRA and various joint powers boards that own the tracks. This action occured after the FRA and the CPUC repeated had attempted to work with the contractors to mitigate several hundred very serious safety violations (violations of federal law) in that:
30% percent of grade crossing signals were completely inoperative for months at a time and that no signals at all were ever in compliance with legally required maintenance;
every mile of track contained at least two locations where the condition of the track was so bad that "track failure and derailment was imminent" (rotted ties, unspiked rails, loose joint bars, washed out ballast, etc)- not even close to compliance with lowly class 1 standards (not even PennCentral could break even running at 10mph, but Conrail did make money after fixing the track);
vegetation was not controlled as required by law, such that the risk of fire to wooden structures such as culverts, bridges, trestles was very high, and that vegetation at grade crossings created visability problems, posing "a grave hazard to the public";
the contractor failed to properly maintain drainage systemwide, such that the r.o.w. was at continual risk of washout - then when mandated did it improperly, so as to aggravate the washout risk and also cause flooding to neighbors (washout was indeed a cronic problem - caused by improper maintenance);
no locomotive on the property met the maintenance requirements set forth by the FRA; also every single locmotive had defective or inoperative brakes or brake controls;
an inadequate number of maintenance workers were employed - just two signal maintainers for hundreds of miles of track, no full time track workers, and few mechanics, and none of the above technically qualified according to national industry standards for their jobs.
And the last straw: the contractors had no training programs for operating or maintenance employees until threatened and forced into it by the FRA and CPUC - but they then dropped the training after only one session, triggering the "emergency shutdown order" just a week or so later.
How appalling is this! Of course, as mentioned in the emergency order, it was the operators contractual duty to properly maintain the track, but it did not do so. Regardless of economic concerns, how can any operator (human being) be so incompetent or so stupid as to allow such a failure to continue, without blowing the whistle for help, warning that he can't afford to or is otherwise unable, to maintain even to class 1 track standards. The smoking gun here was the chronic lack of qualified employees. Without them, no one could have done a proper job; thus it was NOT done! Of course qualified employees cost money, but not that much more than unqualified ones.
There is no excuse for any of this! Of course, whenever "stupidity" doesn't adequately answer the question, that leaves corruption as the answer. How many times in railroad history has someone come in to fleece the industry, taking the money and running (anyone ever hear of the "Credit Mobilier" scandal that nearly destroyed the first transcontinental railroad). Now geewhiz, if I don't pay anyone to do maintenance, I can pocket that money too!
Of course, the question begs - where were the track owners, the NCRA and the various joint powers boards, in all this. Why did they fail to protect their (and the public's) interest in seeing to it the the operating contractor honored its commitments. Why weren't the operators sued to enforce the contract or to replace those failed contractors. Perhaps the FRA would have stayed its hand had they gotten involved to correct the problem.
Did the Espee deliver the property in this bad condition after voluntarily offering it for sale (it was their idea)? If so, why did the state pay for it - Espee should have paid the state to take it off its hands - such as in the case of Amtrak.
Three things in hindsight seem apparent here: that the hodgepodge of NCRA and various joint powers boards may have been an unworkable arrangement, stymieing all; that the track owners must assure that any operating contractor be capable and qualified; that the track owners, given their state mandated charters to keep rail service alive, should contract out all track maintenance directly on their own. I think they finally are directly contracting the track maintenance out on their own, and should continue to do so.
But of course, even though railroad maintenance activities (even deferred maintenace) generally have not historically required EIRs, the biased judge says the voluntarily filed EIR may be inadequate. NCRA shouldn't have filed anything! What a hellacious precedent that would be - EIRs for maintenance - now there is extremism at its finest!
I for one, continue support the effort to restart the railway; though it seems the state legislature does need to re-organize its ownership. For environmental and esthetic reasons, and for the fact that, given the economic realities of our times, we cannot continue to rely solely upon the highway as a mode of transportation - anywhere; public involvment in such efforts is essential to our continued prosperity.
Since I have always believed in this concept, I long ago went to for in rail transportation as a design engineer. But I realize that despite the many successes of public involvement in rail tranportation, many people still have doubts. But hey! No great thing was ever accomplished by listening to naysayers!
OPB
