 |
Re: Yes, we should have bought the Coast Line, back when Phil Anschutz offered it to us for only $400 million, but we were governed by a fool.
Author: BOB2
Date: 10-20-2018 - 07:08
His last paragraph says it all about his take on everything. So how about some facts.....
The State was offered the Coastline by Anschutz back in 92 for the grossly inflated price $400 million dollars, and my old colleague "Steel' Neil Peterson and Assembly Transportation Chair Richard Katz tried to get folks to act .
That amazing bargain offer to sell us the Coast Line, by Phil Anschutz was, of course, bad mouthed by a number of fools (aka politicians) as some kind of "evil" trick by the "evil" SP. And, that useless fool Pete Wilson was doing everything it could to roll back the State rail program, so Caltrans, Division of Fail, was even more useless than usual, in there "assessment" of the proposal. A year earlier, and I'm certain that someone real smart like George Deukmejian would have said yes....and UP's issues wouldn't even be part of this post.
If my numbers are correct, it takes about 2 1/2 to 3 trucks to carry the same weight/volume of oil. So the number of trucks on 166 will be a function of that, times the number of current oil cans loaded per day. Which is unlikely to cause much "congestion" but, since a percentage of rural road accidents are correlated with higher truck volumes, there is a statistical increase in accident probability (and with oil a probability of some small increase in potential accident severity).
Given the nearly 1 billion in improvements that taxpayers will be putting into this line, if all of the plans now on the table "come to pass" for all of the passenger needs we've identified, it would sure be nice to own it, and offer to let BNSF run it, or a private contractor. But, way back in "92 Pete Wilson, done already "screwed the pooch" for us on that, and I can't imagine how much money the UP would want to ripoff the State for the Coast Line today......
The State was offered the Coastline by Anschutz back in 92 for the grossly inflated price $400 million dollars, and my old colleague "Steel' Neil Peterson and Assembly Transportation Chair Richard Katz tried to get folks to act .
That amazing bargain offer to sell us the Coast Line, by Phil Anschutz was, of course, bad mouthed by a number of fools (aka politicians) as some kind of "evil" trick by the "evil" SP. And, that useless fool Pete Wilson was doing everything it could to roll back the State rail program, so Caltrans, Division of Fail, was even more useless than usual, in there "assessment" of the proposal. A year earlier, and I'm certain that someone real smart like George Deukmejian would have said yes....and UP's issues wouldn't even be part of this post.
If my numbers are correct, it takes about 2 1/2 to 3 trucks to carry the same weight/volume of oil. So the number of trucks on 166 will be a function of that, times the number of current oil cans loaded per day. Which is unlikely to cause much "congestion" but, since a percentage of rural road accidents are correlated with higher truck volumes, there is a statistical increase in accident probability (and with oil a probability of some small increase in potential accident severity).
Given the nearly 1 billion in improvements that taxpayers will be putting into this line, if all of the plans now on the table "come to pass" for all of the passenger needs we've identified, it would sure be nice to own it, and offer to let BNSF run it, or a private contractor. But, way back in "92 Pete Wilson, done already "screwed the pooch" for us on that, and I can't imagine how much money the UP would want to ripoff the State for the Coast Line today......
