We asked Charlie Crist if he would sign the FNAA petition. He had the pen in his hand and when he found out what it was for he handed it back and said he would look into it. His aide took the petition and then handed it back several minutes later without a signature.
The second set of tracks is being laid for expanded freight from super-tankers coming to Miami with the expansion of the Panama Canal. The passenger element is just window dressing.
FEC is the exclusive rail provider for the Port of Miami and Port Everglades. In Miami, FEC has now completed building rail in and out. The trains can't go south, so you know where they're headed. The Fort Lauderdale port is next on the list, set to start dredging for the jumbo container ships when environmental studies are completed next year. Source: Sunshine State News
We could be getting up to 100 freight trains a day. This is all about big business.
4 comments:
That’s how a lot of thing get put on the ballot. People are approached out in public and asked to sign a petition about something that they really don’t know much, or anything about, and so they don’t want to really engage with a stranger (remembering what their mother told them, “don’t talk to strangers”) they sign it just to get away and not have to deal with them. Unlike Crist, most of us don’t travel with an entourage or handlers so we take the path of least resistance and sign. Remember the pregnant pig issue in FL, or the raising heights issue in LW? It’s uninformed voters get a lot of things voted in or for.
We have a lot of uninformed voters and the best way to deal with that is to get out among the folks.
The pregnant pig ballot initiative was voted in by all people who are humane...to limit the cruel and inhumane confinement of pigs during pregnancy and their suffering. We won that one by 55% of the electorate.
The heights issue was voted in by 56% of the voters who said they wanted to limit heights in our downtown.
People aren't as stupid as you credit them to be.
Woo Hoo let them all come Florida needs more business, and Scott needs more Money
If we could only study the past ( read some history) then we can see the future clearly but , I don't expect that to happen.
The great Agriculture economist John Kenneth Galbraith and professor at Princeton U. ( who President Kennedy was a student under) wrote a book call a Journey Thorough Economic Times , and in that book he writes of what it was like in the Florida boom years leading up to the 1929 depression .
The FEC rail was so busy with all the boom freight coming in and mostly empty rail car going back out that automobile traffic would be stopped for hours at a time , back then no less !!
When you start out on the wrong foot, you end up on the wrong foot , there is just no way around it, the problems ( as in more then one problem) that we have today were all created 100 yrs ago.
Right now we are trying to put a square peg into a very small hole and at the same time mean variables are heading our way like great big sledge hammers, a big crash.
Here are the facts:
Governments can not do anything right and more so today then ever ( educated fools from uneducated schools with all their degrees), no long term thinking what so ever because they know nothing about anything - no motor skills.
Most private sector do not have long term best interests at heart and more so today then ever, again no motor skills ( educated fools from uneducated schools).
The fact that private sector ( Henry Flagler) and governments did not put some more effort into their long term plans like not putting FEC,CSX or I-95 were they did is the biggest problem that can not be undone now or any time in the near future if ever ( economic now more then ever).
One hundred and fifty + years into the industrial revolution ,ship and rail are still the most cost effective way of transport bar none, and we have bigger and more efficient ships and locomotives and less people to operate mean less jobs/workers ( wink wink state of the art tech.)
Expanding the Panama canal to handle bigger ships means expanding not only port of Miami but Ft. Lauderdale and Port of Palm Beach too and not to mention other ports in Florida.
At the same time the most expensive form of transport, heavy trucking is shrinking for many reasons but mostly because of the Federal Government mandates for the interest of big business and the fact that business demand is falling as in less business. There is a shortage of over 200,000 over the road drivers and the young generation wants nothing of this industry, its too much like work and not much money to be made.
So if we can keep kicking the can down the road ( and I don't think we can, just look at the economic numbers) on the American consumption of Chinese stuff and or if we turn the economy around and start producing products here again, most all of it will be shipped by rail to us and we get the high speed passenger too then the automobile traffic will be a night mare that will pale what happens here in the 20's in city's like Lake Worth ( Boynton , Lantana , Delray and on and on) that unlike West Palm Beach have flyover bridges on most all their main thru ways.
The more that things change the more they stay the same-- people with money will not want to live in cities like Lake Worth when this all comes to pass, only the peasants with part time jobs will live in Lake Worth and you think that company's are going to come to the Park Of Commerce with all the grid lock in traffic??
It's called mal-investment to the highest degree--we have boxed our selves into a corner and it will not end well.
Post a Comment