Kenneth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The deal hasn't been consummated yet.
> See Farhad's statement at the Wed. Board meeting.
> It requires STB approval before it is completed.
>
> The state "white wash" report on the deal is now
> available on SMART's website. Tons of
> information
> and misinformation.
>
> The report has zero on the revenues/costs to
> SMART.
> It was out of scope. But, it doesn't address the
> "what if"
> scenario of what happens if SMART is dissolved
> because it can't pass
> a tax extension measure. If there are freight
> customers
> in 2029, that obligation could indeed transfer to
> the state.
>
> Reminder: they were trounced in March and they'll
> have
> a heck of time winning back voters who had
> supported
> them in 2008, but changed their minds in March.
>
> As everyone on this forum knows, whether purchase
> of NWP Co freight assets comes at a
> net cost or benefit to SMART's revenues remains to
> be
> determined. To the extent it doesn't work out,
> it'll come
> at a cost to passenger rail

Will it come at a cost to passenger rail "to the extent it doesn't work out"? Do you have access to the revenues and cost? If not, then it's your opinion, and we'll just have to see. I suspect that "to the extent it doesn't work out", that the Board is much more likely to ditch the freight customers, with some elitist Nimby Board factions already so inclined.

NWP is apparently meeting some kind of minimum revenue/cost threshold to still be providing service to the small number of customers still able to make use of carload rail services, or they would file to abandon service.

Does anyone know, or is anyone able to predict what the rail freight traffic would be 2029 on a branch line CA? If you do, then there's a Nobel prize in Economics just waiting for the paper to be published....

Meanwhile, SMART is still a hot mess, and nothing Farhad does or says surprises me much, in keeping his job this long, rocking and rolling with the motions of a still largely dysfunctional Board. But, with interest rates this low, it's a shame that the taxpayers couldn't have extended SMART's sales tax funding, and refinanced the existing debt load, at a massive savings in interest payments to themselves as taxpayers... Maybe, in cases like this, the "Vox populi vox ignorantiae" principle is proven right?