Re: Could this be an excuse ... ??
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 01-04-2010 - 12:43
One could hope I suppose. But the necessary cooperation from the ewePee makes that hard to do. But it has happened before - elsewhere!
Impending Winter Olympics certainly did accelerate Salt Lake City's effort to complete its TRAXX light rails lines in time. One of those new lines went up into the huge University Of Utah campus, where many of the Olympic venues were located. Extra Federal money was even provided to help the cause! They didn't even have to ask for it - the Feds offered it on their own!
And indeed, ewePee's extensive cooperation (and deep involvement) in the very quick and relatively inexpensive construction of Salt Lake's diesel commuter system (85 miles of 2nd and 3rd tracks), says the railroad can cooperate very well when they want to.
Makes you wonder why threatened court action over the Capital Corridor and such, was needed here but not there. Or why BART couldn't even manage to get a r.o.w. sharing agreement for the E-BART (also with separate tracks), over a defunct unused line - let alone, on one of the busiest freight r.o.w in America, that the UTA is now sharing.
Considering California's very poor reputation with Federal transit officials, or its generally jacked up ways of doing all things; it is highly doubtful even if the ewePee did cooperate, that they could manage to accomplish it, before hell freezes over enough to have winter olympics there instead.
Besides, the Caliphonia Grabernator has already been taking (stealing) moneys collected specifically for passenger rail money; throwing it all into several much bigger sink-holes - black holes actually it seems.
OPB