Editorial: Rail link study a step in the right direction

[www.redbluffdailynews.com]

POSTED: 07/08/16, 7:41 AM

California loves to tout its economy as the sixth-largest in the world, but anybody who lives in the rural north knows not all parts of California are created equal.

There are pockets of poverty here, and it’s easy for us to bristle when others talk about California as the land of milk and honey when employment and per capita income lag behind more populous and affluent areas of the state.

There are many reasons certain areas get left behind. Often, it is transportation. Tehama County, for example, has Interstate 5 but no passenger rail stop or air service. Those are our limitations and it has a negative effect on our economy.

For the North Coast region, it’s much the same. An area of natural beauty, it’s also very hard to get there. That means fewer big businesses locate there, so there are fewer jobs.

But Humboldt County has a unique asset — a deep-water port, the best one between Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma. Few cargo ships go there, however, because the overland routes to and from Humboldt Bay are sketchy and unreliable.

Whether it’s freight from Asia that must be dispersed across the United States, or American products headed across the Pacific, it’s hard to get cargo to or from Humboldt Bay. There’s no easy road to Interstate 5 or Interstate 80 farther south. Highways 36, 299 and 101 are curvy, slow and prone to slides in winter.

There also is no working railroad in Humboldt County after the North Coast Railroad south to the Bay Area was abandoned in the 1990s. There’s little hope of that line ever getting rebuilt. It was dangerous and frequently closed by landslides in the Eel River Canyon. Port activity has suffered as a result. Humboldt County officials estimated the lack of a rail system to the area results in an annual $25 million loss as shippers use other ports.

Humboldt County’s last, best hope for a rail connection to the outside world is a line to the north valley. It has been discussed since the 1800s, but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake derailed that idea. It was deemed more important to build a line to the Bay Area instead so that North Coast timber could be used to rebuild the city.

That line was the North Coast Railroad, which eventually crumbled.

Now the route to the north valley will be explored in detail. A $276,000 grant was awarded by Caltrans that will pay for a feasibility study on a line from Eureka to the tracks in Gerber in Tehama County.

The study will look at potential routes, additional uses for the rail corridor, economic benefits, costs to develop and environmental impacts.

The feasibility study will take years, just as planning for the scope of such a study took years. But at least it’s still alive and moving forward, however slowly.

Anything that connects the rural north to the outside world would help us all.