Following are a few odds and ends culled from comments here and on other boards.
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According to yesterday's Tribune, at-large New Albany city council candidate James Hollis has yet to file his donation and expenditure records (due last Friday), and supposedly faces a $50-per-day fine for being late.
Hollis also didn't return his Tribune candidate questionnaire. I don’t know the man, but does this sound like the sort of official that you'd rely upon to "play by the rules"?
By the way, the trognonymous blogger Erika, herself a candidate under her real name of Vicki Denhart, endorses Hollis.
Do you believe she understands the meaning of irony?
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There has been much well deserved discussion of the 15th street railroad corridor, its perpetual state of disrepair and the potential for serious derailments and accidents.
Over and beyond these legitimate concerns, every time I look at, cross over or think of that stretch of track, I see a bike path and pedway like Indy’s Monon Trail, connected to the Ohio River Greenway project downtown and leading straight out Grant Line Road to IU Southeast and beyond.
Maybe Hugo Chavez isn’t all wrong, after all.
Hence, the very first New Albanian mayoral candidate to endorse nationalizing (or city-izing?) the railroad has my endorsement, money and vote. This offer is non-partisan and includes Ms. Bolovschak, who may like to have the K & I Bridge thrown in as part of the deal.
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You didn’t think I’d forget to remind readers that today is Day 50 of NAC’s award-winning Steve Price blogwatch, did you?
Well, it is. The 3rd district incumbent’s last blog posting appeared on March 6. Undoubtedly he’s resting his clichés for deployment in next week’s Q & A session at the S. Ellen Jones School.
The lamentable part about CM Price’s newfound (and rapidly aging) reticence is that it has been enabled by the presence of not one, but two candidates in opposition to his archaic brand of civic decay management. The incumbent could still win the primary with as many as 66% of the total Democratic vote cast against him – and that doesn’t include the Republicans.
CM Price’s re-election bid is much like the possibility of a 15th street train wreck with hazardous chemicals aboard: We’re hoping for the best … but probably should be planning for the worst.
The idea for a bike path and pedway to replace the railroad track on 15th Street and out Grant Line Rd. sounds good, but consider this. Instead of trains holding up traffic trying to get from one end of town to the other, it would be people walking/jogging, riding bikes, and standing in the middle of 15th Street talking while holding up traffic. The Monon Trail in Indy isn't using a route that cuts off one end of the city from the other like the New Albany 15th Street track, and is not in direct contact with motor vehicle traffic. It would be trading one dangerous situation (the trains and the track), for the risk of people getting hit by cars.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone watched the WNAS candidate spots on cable channel 25?
ReplyDeleteSome are informative, some are funny and some are down right scary!
Not sure what times it plays, but it's worth the hour to watch.
The 15th street railroad track may present a hazard to bicyclists, and be a pain to motorists forced to wait for its trains to pass, but it's here to stay and thankfully.
ReplyDeleteRailroad freight is the most efficient use of resources for the transport of goods over long distances. For a city that pines for the days of high-paying jobs, it is critical that the infrastructure of rail transport be retained. One of the most regretable moves the city has made recently was the down-zoning of the property that once housed Grace Chemical on Grant Line road. The brownfield site of the old chemical plant was zoned to allow for the construction of Wal-Mart. A functionable industrial site which could have housed a new, high tech manufacturing business which would, presumably, pay good wages and help strengthen the local economy was traded for a sprawl-pattern development featuring low wage service sector jobs. In the process, this down-zoning took out of servcice a valuable infrastructural asset--a fuctioning rail siding--which should have been put to use in our efforts to build a vibrant economy.
If we ever want to move toward a less car-centered lifestyle, dismantling the railroads or throwing roadblocks in their way is not the wisest path.
Then if the railroad is here to stay, the railroad tracks...the entire stretch of tracks, needs to be updated, repaired, and maintained..not just at select crossings.
ReplyDeleteBut ... BUT ... if and when the railroad leaves, and whether or not we pushed them into going, then the tracks need to be removed and the bike and pedway installed.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, John A., but your scenario whereby we don't make progress become some people are dunderheads simply doesn't wash.
There's plenty of traffic around the Monon Trail, and we wouldn't have to use the 15th Street stretch downtown to make it work. The section from there going out Grant Line is the critical one, and there are few crossings that way.
Hell, we can't agree all the time.
The railroad tracks do, indeed, need to be maintained along every foot of track. The freight carriers are raking in the dough now.
ReplyDeleteCSX, the line that serves the place I work, in downtown Louisville, has tried several times in recent years to have our factory taken off the route. We send out about 10-15 cars a week but this, and in-town stops generally are, apparently small potatoes compared to other customers. The version of the story I've heard is that a federal law prohibits any customer from being removed from service but once that service is voluntarily stopped by the customer it need not be reinstated. The point being that if they can be selective in the customers they choose to serve, they are, in fact, flush. We and, in fact, any city should have the leverage to demand the railroads provide top level maintenance on the tracks going through towns.
Track maintenance is critical as shown by the accident last fall in Shepherdsville. Obviously, a derailment in the heart of the city is disruptive at best and life threatening at worst.
As the late Johnny Cochran might have said, "If they're gonna roll they must pay the toll." The toll being safety-assuring maintenance.
By the way, I believe the rail right of way passing through Al Goodman's property goes quite a way up through Clarksville. It has been abandoned and could be incorporated into the greenway project somehow; similar to the Monon park in Indianapolis. Also the old Southern line south of Dewey street has been abandoned.
A possible involvement of the City Government in this issue could be an agreement with lines passing through the city that in the event of abandonment, the city has the first right of refusal on this property for use in park land. I seem to recall that one reason these rails to trails arrangements were made in the first place was to preserve rights of way in the event that, at some point in the future, the land were needed again as track bed; I won't swear that's accurate though.
Roger said, "Hell, we can't agree all the time".
ReplyDeleteI agree.