2022-01-20 - IV - Thompson, Joseph P.Joseph P . Thompson, Esq, Janu 18, 2022
PUBLIC COMMENT: ALL COUNCIL, ALL BOS, ALL COG:
WHY DIDN'T VTA DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS? COG? AMBAG? TAMC? ETC.,
ALL THE OTHER "AUTHORITIES"?
Excerpt of my letter to AMBAG dated 1-24-2004:
3. Intermodal Facilities for Central California Coast Region.
Many years ago I asked "senior transportation planners" at AMBAG
and VTA why we did not have restoration of intermodal facilities
on either Silicon Valley or Salinas Valley long-range congestion
management plans. The universal response that I received was,
"What is an intermodal facility?" To which I responded, "And you
call yourself a transportation planner?" While working for SP's
PMT and for UP those 17 years, we operated the "Salad Bowl
Express" via SP-Ogden-UP-Council Bluffs-CNW-Chicago-PC, offering
seventh morning service for ag shippers and receivers. However,
both Salinas Valley and Silicon Valley shippers and receivers no
longer have an intermodal option. The closest ramp for NAFTA
partner tonnage is UP's new intermodal facility at Lathrop.
Foreign tonnage must be drayed to the ports at either Oakland or
Long Beach. In fact, Silicon Valley is the largest urban area in
North America without an intermodal facility. Our MPO's "senior
planners" blame senior citizens driving their gas guzzlers to
Safeway for causing smog, air pollution and highway congestion,
yet it takes 9,000 subcompact cars to make as much air pollution
as that of one fully -loaded big rig at today's GVW (80,000 lbs.).
And axle weight is the single largest factor in road surface and
bridge support deterioration. Under proposed TEA-21
reauthorization legislation now in conference committee in
Washington, we may soon see NAFTA "harmonized" GVW, either at the
Canadian (101,000 lbs.) or Mexican (108,000 lbs.) limit.
Furthermore, the power players in the economy are asking that the
freeze be lifted on LCVs (long combination vehicles: triple 27-
ft., double 53-ft. trailers pulled by one tractor) (they are
presently legal in 17 states). And to make matters worse, the
Southern California Association of Governments has resolved to
build "truck -only" toll roads, even though it takes 4 times as
much fuel to move a ton of freight with rubber tires on concrete
or asphalt as it does to move that ton with steel wheels rolling
on steel rails. At the end of WWII the Nation had more than 2,500
intermodal facilities, but now we have only about 250. Our MPOs
give us wasteful public -sector transit, as the MIT study said
about VTA's worst -in -the -Nation transit system, but their "senior
planners" do not even know what an intermodal facility is. I
concur in AAR CEO's remarks to the Transportation Table in
Washington, reported in Traffic World (5/24/04, p. 14) that "85
percent of the nation's Metropolitan Planning Organizations have
no expertise in freight planning." (see enclosed Traffic World
article). Salinas Valley and Silicon Valley MPOs prove his point.
We are superior wasters of taxpayers money with boondoggles like
Lite Rail, Amtrak, Caltrain, Bullet Train, but we ignore our job -
creating commerce and business, just as AMBAG ash -canned its own
Freight Study, which concluded, as I did separately, that we need
an intermodal facility on the Central California Coast.
Furthermore, I agree with Mr. Jim Nicholas, Chief Highway
Programs, Caltrans, Sacramento, who told the CTC meeting at San
Jose City Hall on 6/6/01 that California needs more intermodal
facilities. At the invitation of the CTC, in December, 2002, I
addressed them on the subject of intermodal facility financing,
and gave them a copy of the white paper I drafted, together with
a copy of the intermodal facility financing white paper from the
Nation's newest one in Stark County, Ohio, called "NEOMODAL
FACILITY."
Looking back at transport policy failures by local
government. This is what we get with "authorities" like VTA, COG,
TAMC, SCCRTC in charge of transport policy. JPT January 18, 2022
JOSEPFI P. THOMPSON
Attorney at Law
8339 Church Street, Suite 112, Gilroy, CA 95020
Post Office Box 154, Gilroy, CA 95021-0154
Telephone (408) 848-5506; Fax (408) 848-4246
E-mail: TransLaw@PacBell.Net
June 24, 2004
FAX (831) 883-3755
Mr, Nicholas Papadakis, Executive Director
Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments
P.O. Box 809
Marina, CA 93933-0809
FAX (831) 636-4160
Mr. Thomas Quigley, Executive Director
San Benito County Council of Government
481. Fourth Street
Hollister, CA 95023
Re: AMBAG 2005 MTP Scoping Meeting 6/24/04—Public Continent
Dear Messrs, Papadakis and Quigley,
Referring to AMBAG' s notice of "scoping meeting" soliciting public input on which to focus
development of the program level for the Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) Environmental
Impact Report (EIR.), thank you for asking members of the public to comment on this vital subject.
Please add these remarks to the official record of your proceedings so that history will know that you
listened.
Identity of Author. I have been in transportation for 42 years, the last 25 of which I have
spent representing carriers and their customers before state and federal courts and agencies.
Previously, I was graveyard shift supervisor at the intermodal facility in San Jose (1964-1970) and
diversion, expediting, tracing and complaint clerk for UP in San Jose (1970-1980). I am a former
member of COG's Transit Task Force. I am a member of COG's Rail Advisory Committee, SBC
Safe Kids Coalition, the Legislation, Arbitration, Intennodal and Freight Claims Committees of the
Transportation Lawyers Association, the Association for Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy,
Conference of Freight Counsel, and a candidate for the American Society of Transportation and
Logistics, and otherprofessional organizations in our community, our State and our Nation, I am
founder of Mothers Against Damned Deregulation —Transportation Union Against Regulatory
Destruction of Society, San Benito County Small Business Incubator, and past -president of Gilroy -
Morgan Hill Bar Assn., and Vineyard Estates Mutual Water Co., Inc, I was formerly a member of
two local chambers of commerce (Gilroy and Hollister) government review councils. In 1997 I
received the Best Research Paper Award from the National Board of Directors of the AST&L. I have
been d.oing post -doctoral research of transportation law and policy at the Norman Y. Mineta
International Institute for Surface 'Transportation Policy Studies at SJSU, and at Transportation
Research Board at Georgetown University, and at the Library of Congress, My comments are merely
my own, however, and not submitted on behalf ofRAC, TLA, ATLLP, AST&L, CFC, or any
AMBAG Scoping Meeting 6-24-04: Public Comments: Recommendations for
2005 MTP EIR Programs and Policies 1.
organization to which Lbelong, but are only my own ideas as a student.
Background. I have written and submitted many letters and papers to COG's Directors on
the subject of COG's dysfunctional transport policies, including the several papers that I submitted
to COG when it was deliberating on the Regional Transportation Plan and amendments thereto. I ask
that those letters and papers be included in the official record of AMBAG' s proceedings. I am also
enclosing my paper, "ISTEA Reauthorization and the National Transportation Policy," which I
presented at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Association for Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, on June 25, 1997. It was published at 25 Transportation Law Journal, pp.
87-et sag, (1997), and in shortened version as "ISTEA Reauthorization and the National
Transportation Policy: Overlooked Externalities and Forgotten Felt Necessities," Transportation
Lawyer (Dec. 1997). I am also enclosing a copy of my paper "El Camino Real 2000: A
Transportation Business and Logistics Perspective on the Proposed Widening of U.S . Highway 101,"
which 1 wrote while serving on Gilroy Chamber of Commerce's GRC in response to an invitation
from VTA. Please include them in the official record of your proceedings.
Program Level Recommendations:
1. Abolish Public -Sector Transnort.
A Santa Clara County Grand Jury report issued last week not only reveals structural integrity
and systemic failures of VTA, it serves as an indictment of the Nation's MPO modelit confirms the
conclusion of Harvard professors Jose A. Gamez-Ibafiez and John R. Meyer, Going Private: The
International Experience with Transport Privatization (Wash, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993), that
public -sector transit is less efficient, more expensive, and yields less transport, than private -sector
transport. The indictment should be leveled at all our MPO' s, not just VTA, because the VTA model
is widely followed, including TAMC, SCCRTC, COG, etc, Notwithstanding subsidy recipients' and
public -transit advocates' denials, in cities and counties all over the Nation, more transport for less
money is furnished whenever privatization is adopted. The lessons of the last century in Great
Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries, not to mention the
Soviet Bloc, reveal how much America could benefit if we joined what the Wall Street Journal
called the "Privatization Revolution." Tearing down the Iron Curtain in American transport policy,
returning to our heritage of freedom and private enterprise in transport, is the real remedy for the ills
inherent in publicly -owned industry. MPOs, including those on the Central California Coast Region,
err by including the for -hire carriage of passenger business with creation and maintenance of the
transport infrastructure. We condemn future generations to unsustainable tax burdens by opting for
the Iron F'ist of Karl Marx, rather than the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. Political patronage and
public -sector union employees' pensions have, under Our MPO model, come to have greater
importance than efficient transportation, contrary to the express provisions of the National
Transportation Policy in Title 49, United States Code. Until our leaders recognize this fact, we will,
as a transportation lawyer once said, be a House Divided against ourselves. As he reminded us, we
shall not remain both; we will become all one, or all the other. I recommend that we be free
enterprise capitalists, not slaves to public -sector Black Holes. 1 am enclosing a copy of the Grand
Jury Report. They recognized VTA' s fundamental unsoundness, but in my opinion, they
misdiagnosed the remedy. They remind me of a surgeon who finds an inoperable tumor, but
AMBAG Scoping Meeting 6-24-04: Public Comments: Recommendations for
2005 MTP EIR Programs and Policies 2
prescribes a band -aide for it.
2,Peceptive, Misleading Financial Reports,
Our Legislature requires businesses to use generally accepted accounting principles
("GAAP"). Corps. Code §114. However, it made an exception for transit agencies, whose financial
reports need not be "in conformity" with GAAP. Consequently, transit agency directors, like those
in our Region, cannot accurately assess the full extent of financial losses being sustained by their
own agencies. This policy decision by our Legislature enriches urban areas at the expense of rural
Californians. Donor rural counties' residents send vast subsidies to cities' transit riders, the donees
of these subsidies. Although it would be cheaper for rural counties' agencies to hire limousines for
transit patrons, our agencies' directors cannot find evidence for it in their own financial reports. This
is 'because the Legislature, which is controlled by urban legislators, have a double -standard in place:
private sector companies on GAAP financial reporting; public -sector not using GAAP, So, society
ends -up paying the wasteful transit practices, which are blindly endorsed by local elected leaders.
They can see the empty seats with their own eyes, but their agencies' financial reports are
manipulated to minimize the losses being sustained. Emperor Transit First is stark naked! We should
believe our eyes, not our MPO's financial statements.
3. Intermodal Facilities for Central California Coast Region. Many years ago I asked
"senior transportation planners" at AMBAG and VTA why we did not have restoration of intermodal
facilities on either Silicon Valley or Salinas Valley long-range congestion management plans. The
universal response that ireceived was, "What is an intermodal facility?" To which I responded, "And
you call yourself a transportation planner?" While working for SP' s PMT and for UP those 17 years,
we operated the "Salad Bowl Express" via SP-Ogden-UP-Council Bluffs-CNW-Chicago-PC,
offering seventh morning service for ag shippers and receivers. However, both Salinas Valley and
Silicon Valley shippers and receivers no longer have an intermodal option. The closest ramp for
NAFTA partner tonnage is UP' s new intermodal facility at Lathrop. Foreign tonnage must be drayed
to the ports at either Oakland or Long Beach. In fact, Silicon Valley is the largest urban area in North
America without an intermodal facility. Our MPO's "senior planners" blame senior citizens driving
their gas guzzlers to Safeway for causing smog, air pollution and highway congestion, yet it takes
9,000 subcompact ears to make as much air pollution as that of one fully -loaded big rig at toclay's
GVW (80,000 lbs.). And axle weight is the single largest factor in road surface and bridge support
d.eterioration. Under proposed TEA-21 reauthorization legislation now in conference committee in
Washington, we may soon see NAFTA ".harmonized" °VW, either at the Canadian (101,000 lbs.)
or Mexican (108,000 lbs.) limit. Furthermore, the power players in the economy are asking that the
freeze be lifted on LCVs (long combination vehicles: triple 27-ft., double 53-ft. trailers pulled by one
tractor) (they are presently legal in 17 states). And to make matters worse, the Southern California
Association of Governments has resolved to build "truck -only" toll roads, even though it takes 4
times as much fuel to move a ton of freight with rubber tires on concrete or asphalt as it does to
move that ton with steel wheels rolling on steel rails. At the end of WWII the Nation had more than
2,500 intermodal facilities, but now we have only about 250. Our MPOs give us wasteful public-
AMBAG Scoping Meeting 6-24-04: Public Comments: Recommendations for
2005 MTP EIR Programs and Policies 3
sector transit, as the MIT study said about VTA's worst -in -the -Nation transit system, but their
"senior planners" do not even know what an intermodal facility is. I concur in AAR CEO's remarks
to the Transportation Table in Washington, reported in Traffic World (5/24/04, p. 14) that "85
percent of the nation's Metropolitan Planning Organizations have no expertise in freight planning."
(see enclosed Traffic World article). Salinas Valley and Silicon Valley MPOs prove his point. We
are superior wasters of taxpayers money with boondoggles like Lite Rail, Amtrak, Caltrain, Bullet
Train, but we ignore our job -creating commerce and business, just as AMBAG ash -canned its own
Freight Study, which concluded, as I did separately, that we need an intermodal facility on the
Central California Coast. Furthermore, I agree with Mr, Jim Nicholas, Chief Highway Programs,
Caltrans, Sacramento, who told the CTC meeting at San Jose City Hall on 6/6/01 that California
needs more intermodal facilities, At the invitation of the CTC, in December, 2002, 1 addressed them
on the subject of intermodal facility financing, and gave them a copy of the white paper I drafted.,
together with a copy of the intermodal facility financing white paper from the Nation's newest one
in Stark County, Ohio, called "NEOMODAL FACILITY."
4. San Benito County Jurisdiction.,
San Benito County has its own MPO, namely, COG. Our COG's Directors have voted
unanimously to reject extending Caltrain from Gilroy to Hollister. While recognizing the importance
of rail commerce, COG' s Directors recognize that to finance it we cannot afford the methods
employed by San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Being donee counties, they also
enjoy population and tax bases absent in our rural County, which is a donor county. Being a donor
county, we send 89% of each tax dollar that we send to Sacramento to other counties, e.g., LA, SF,
etc., and thus get back only 11 cents for each dollar. We get back even less from our federal taxes
sent to Washington. In May of 2003 COO's Directors also unanimously voted to privatize County
Transit, but so far have not yet implemented their idea. They will, once implemented, save our
County's taxpayers and future residents millions of tax dollars that would otherwise be wasted by
the Boondoggles Empty Seat Transporters Association (BESTA), like those in Monterey and Santa
Cruz Counties. With such MPO waste:I:illness, it is no wonder that Monterey and Santa Cruz
Counties have the least affordable housing in California. I hope and pray that our COG's Directors
will not succumb to the socialist -communist philosophy that dominates our neighboring counties.
Caveat viator!
cc: COG Directors
cc: SBC County Supervisors
Encl. [Letters; Papers; Grand Jury Report}
Respectfully yours,
JOSEPH P. THOMPSON
AMBAG Scoping Meeting 6-24-04: Public Comments: Recommendations for
2005 MTP EIR Programs and Policies
1/17/22, 9:58 PM AT&T Yahoo Mail - COMMENT WAS NOT ACCEPTED ON YOUR DISCUSS FEATURE --I USED MY USER NAME AND PASSW,,.
COMMENT WAS NOT ACCEPTED ON YOUR DISCUSS FEATURE --I USED MY USER NAME
AND PASSWORD, WHICH IT WOULD NOT ACCEPT:
From: Joseph P Thompson (translaw@pacbell.net)
To:
Date: Monday, January 17, 2022, 11:55 AM PST
Dear Editor,
My comment to the Article about a new Amazon Distribution Facility off Hwy. 152 (Your Discuss would not let
me log in):
Dear Friends,
This is great news. We need private sector transport solutions. The public sector ones that are bleeding
taxpayers dry are black -hole boondoggles that waste more taxes every passing year. Time for our local leaders
to turn their backs on VTA BS-Baloney, Why not ask UPRR's Industrial Development Department to put in an
intermodal facility, where those TOFC & COFC tons could be ramped and deramped, reducing highway
congestion, reducing air pollution, reducing road maintenance expenses, as those tons are diverted from
highways to rails. The late Bill Lindsteadt and I recommended that years ago, but MTC (which controls overall
transport for the Bay Area Counties), would not listen. We've suffered the consequences ever since. UPS is
UPRR's biggest intermodal customer, but I'd guess that Amazon has some pretty big freight revenues to
distribute,
About 20 years ago, when I was in Ornaha to receive a Best Research Paper Award from the AST&L, I
went into UPRR's Hq.,
and sat down with their head guy of intermodal traffic, and pitched him on the idea of restoration of intermodal
facilities for the
Central California Coast Region, Got no help whatsoever from local government, or County, or State. Zero.
Nada. Bill and I just
shook our heads: Local politicians know transit, but they don't know transportation. Consequently, we've seen
what VTA dishes
out, all the boondoggles paid for by ever-increasing gas taxes. To their eternal shame.
Caveat viator.
Joe Thompson, Past -Chair, Legislation Committee, Transportation Lawyers Assn.
Past -President, 1999-2001, 2006, Gilroy -Morgan Hill Bar Assn.
E-Mail: TransLaw@PacBell.Net, 408-848-5506
CC: PUBLIC COMMENT, ALL COUNCIL MEMBERS, NEXT MEETING: REAL OR VIRTUAL, REGULAR OR
SPECIAL,
STUDY SESSION OR PRIVATE RETREAT, AND/OR NON -BROWN ACT COMPLIANT MEETING OF THE
SO-CALLED
"MOBILITY PARTNERSHIP" VTA & COG...
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