Metro Jacksonville

Is Jacksonville Losing Logistically?

(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/photos/thumbs/lrg-2221-p1040699.JPG)

Wake up City, your surface logistics dynasty is falling...

In the year 1960, Jacksonville was still the railroad logistics center of the American southeast. Ten railroad yards and hundreds of miles of sidings attested to our undisputed role as The Gateway City of Florida. At the onset of mergers and the digital age, much of our importance began to fade; trains didn't need to travel from yard to yard anymore.

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http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-dec-is-jacksonville-losing-logistically

Sounds like the typical American city experience over the last 30 years ignore infrastructure in the name of lower taxes.

What would it take to reestablish some of what has been lost?

Well with the current Administration, which has no plan, no vision and no leadership...........nothing can be done! It would boil down to the private sector going ahead with whatever Plan they have!

Unintentional (or intentional?) destruction of our rail infrastructure.  Question is, can we reconstruct it or is there a need to reconstruct it?  I would say yes with all of the things going on with JaxPort and downtown; will probably have to be resurrected at some point in the future as commerce which needs rail support comes back.

"HU"

I'm no expert, by any means, but it occurs to me that not having rail (and excess capacity) at the port is criminal.

buckethead..........I am like you! I am not an expert by any stretch but this City has suffered for years with ineptitude, no leadership,no vision and no plan! Local GOB Network is just busy taking care of them and theirs and making sure the keep their pockets lines! The various ones who have made the news are just the ones that have been caught! Many more to go for sure!

Having never considered rail as means of transportation for myself until coming here, I'd say it's a pity that folks don't realize that they can get to many places they want to go, cheaper than airfare or gasoline. Amtrak? Isn't that DC/Philly/NYC/Boston? Certainly not for us.

Missed opprtunity for amtrack. As for rail at the port, we need to march down with our pitchforks and torches on that issue. Does that gate station at Hecksher and 9A have any bearing on the lack of rail?

Go get 'em in the smoke filled room, Ock. Bring a couple varieties of smoking apparatus. From the Peace pipe or funeral pyre. They choose.

Considering how some here, like to use pictures to sell fantasy, let's just suppose that words do a better job. We need growth people, not the 2% that the Obama fans claim they can get, we need 4% GDP year over year to grow our country and our people out of the current straits. Jeb Bush was on CNBC this AM, said 4% is achieveable, but we need to expand and grow, in all areas of the economy. You can't spend your way out of a recession, you have to grow it and get back the jobs that were lost. In 2001, it took 40 months to recover the jobs lost from that recession. Does Obama have 40+ months to wait for growth and jobs?


I think not. Love the pictures though. lol

Talk is cheap and I believe "Jeb" no more than I believed his brother "Dubya"! I do agree that we need to get serious about jobs and the like! Exporting our engineering and manufacturing base does us no good in the long run!

Quote from: mtraininjax on December 10, 2009, 12:03:43 AM
Considering how some here, like to use pictures to sell fantasy, let's just suppose that words do a better job. We need growth people, not the 2% that the Obama fans claim they can get, we need 4% GDP year over year to grow our country and our people out of the current straits. Jeb Bush was on CNBC this AM, said 4% is achieveable, but we need to expand and grow, in all areas of the economy. You can't spend your way out of a recession, you have to grow it and get back the jobs that were lost. In 2001, it took 40 months to recover the jobs lost from that recession. Does Obama have 40+ months to wait for growth and jobs?


I think not. Love the pictures though. lol

So rail at the port is a sentimental notion?

If you had a graph of the spread of Interstate Highways and one with the decline of rail freight traffic, I'll bet they would have a one to one inverse relationship.  The Interstates, built and maintained by the Federal government made truck freight transport more attractive than the railroads which had to build and maintain their own equipment.  Ock, am I right?

With the rapid increase in the price of oil, that trend might just begin to be reversed. I hope.

(http://inlinethumb14.webshots.com/45709/2232308730043154927S500x500Q85.jpg)
Oh my God, OCK lives right over that hill... Well sometimes anyway.

Quote from: mtraininjax on December 10, 2009, 12:03:43 AM
Considering how some here, like to use pictures to sell fantasy, let's just suppose that words do a better job. We need growth people, not the 2% that the Obama fans claim they can get, we need 4% GDP year over year to grow our country and our people out of the current straits. Jeb Bush was on CNBC this AM, said 4% is achieveable, but we need to expand and grow, in all areas of the economy. You can't spend your way out of a recession, you have to grow it and get back the jobs that were lost. In 2001, it took 40 months to recover the jobs lost from that recession. Does Obama have 40+ months to wait for growth and jobs?


I think not. Love the pictures though. lol

MTRAIN, You and I BOTH know better then this post suggests... Glad you like the photos, but which one is a fantasy?

Photo 1, A double stack container train, as in, have you ever seen the FEC drawbridge with a train on it?

Photo 2, A mega warehouse for bulk shipment logistics, as in, have you ever driven around Imeson? Commonwealth at Lane? Philips Highway?

Photo 3, A giant railroad intermodal center, as in, you do know about Pritchard Road's CSX yard, Bowden Yard and Simpson Yard right?

Photo's 4-5, Huntsville Alabama's International Logistics Center, as in rail, air, highway... ahh but they are missing the Port!

I agree with your review of the Obama practice of "Spending us rich," in all area's, but I would argue certain sectors that have long been neglected are overdue for some spending. Rail is one of those sectors.

Dog Walker, you are dead on right about the decline in rail cargo or passenger services. If one overlays a map of the Interstate Highway System on a map of the US Rail Network of 1954, the results are shockingly obvious. The government simply (I'm sure with no help from the highway lobby and think tanks like CUTR or USF) decided to build a taxpayer supported super system to compete with a private industry that led the entire world.

The cost of fuel has already done it's work and today the railroads are in the strange situation of regrets for the massive abandonment's of the recent past. Today the industry is investing BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars in double and triple tracking, up grades, speed increases, cutoffs and even reopening long abandoned rights of way. An industry that was flirting with 20% or so of the entire freight load in America, is now back to almost 50%. The other percentages are divided between trucking, waterways and air. All of this and Florida has kept it's head in the sand thanks to the expert advice of our transportation think tank at CUTR/USF.


OCKLAWAHA

CUTR/USF are experts? Well they sure do think they are..............not!

Guess they are if you work for GM, Firestone, Standard Oil or Phillips anyway.

OCKLAWAHA

Quote from: CS Foltz on December 10, 2009, 08:38:34 PM
CUTR/USF are experts? Well they sure do think they are..............not!

Of course they are experts!  The real question is what they are experts at.......maybe producing impressive sounding reports that support the position of whoever gives them money?

Dog Walker that is the issue in a nutshell. Who ever pays them gets their consulting and forecasting projections biased in their favor plain and simple. I can understand how that would take place since you don't bite the hand that feeds you but to assume CUTR & USF are the "reigning" experts is simplistic and not in the Taxpayers best interest for sure! Gee makes me wonder just well they represent the paying public?

I don't think its quite that simple CS....I know you have a distrust of consultants (and smetimes it seems everyone else), but I know many who are very honest....in the case of CUTR, they have some researchers who favor BRT...so they seek out those clients and vice versa.

TU, you are right, but they should then not claim that they are putting out "scientific, objective" studies.  They should put their advocacy plainly.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, then all problems look like nails."

Dog Walker...........I agree with your synopsis of the situation......nails, cute for sure! tufsu1 your are correct .....I do not trust consultants, who are biased by the people who have retained them to produce a report or a projection! In fact I seldom trust most people......since most have an agenda that concerns them and them only.  A lot of people have two sides, their public side and their private side and both can be 180 degres apart.  I really have to know someone for quite awhile before I even begin to trust anyone but that's me!

My own take on this might be different then yours TUFSU, I just don't believe these "institutes", "think tanks," "Anti-Tax Groups," or the "Highway Lobby and their consultants," can be trusted. The reason is founded in history. From the earliest auto trails in 1900 until today, they have been able to pay the political machine to get their wishes. From 1900 until today the railroads have paid Interstate Taxes, Property Taxes, Utility Taxes and even special Road and School District Taxes. In those early days of roads it was REQUIRED of every able bodied man to spend up to 30 days a year in service to the State, digging ditches, cutting right-of-ways, and laying shell on our roads. Failure to show up for your term was punishable by imprisonment. So the highways were paid for in no small part by the Railroads, and built with the "slave labor" of the masses, to satisfy a growing power bloc of American industry and finance. We allowed the combined might of big oil, big rubber, and big auto, and big Truck and Bus, to dictate our transportation system as we know it today. Anyone who doesn't think this entire "Highway industry Bloc," operates like the Mafia, need only ask Packard, American Motors, Willy's, Studebaker, or Kaiser. They succeeded in destroying virtually the entire mass transit industry of the United States, Canada and Mexico, as we knew it. These guys were even convicted of trashing the streetcar and interurban railroads. Less common is the story of the Interstate Highway System, which was mysteriously laid out (by planners and consultants) to run right alongside EVERY SINGLE railroad mainline in America, taking full advantage of modern construction machines to shortcut  the tracks. They are almost solely responsible for the piecemeal dismantling of the passenger rail network, and massive abandonment's of freight trackage. As long as the taxpayers and political parties could be duped into buying into such trick words as FREEway, Flexible Transit, etc. we would be immune to their poison. We were shown how much cheaper it was to operate a single semi or Greyhound, compaired to 20-50 miles of track. A weekly train to Podunk next Friday, could hardly compete with a Semi truck TODAY. Ditto for the bus and passenger train. Once the feeders were cut to pieces the mainlines began to fail and fall. Even two of our transcontinental railroads were torn up and sold for junk. Entire states became converts to the "highway only," doctrine all the time being led by professional legal and Consultant advice. I mentioned politics too, another guilty group, Republicans who support big oil, autos, rubber and highways. Democrats who stay in bed with big labor, UAW, Teamsters, UTU, BLE, BRAC etc... How does a citizenry or a city differentiate between "professional advice" and "evil design?" Cha Ching...

Sure this is way over simplified, and not a case in point, but it certainly gives us some ideas on why not just consultants, but transportation consultants are on the suspect list. Hopefully the "big 4 on MJ" are not guilty of this, I know for a fact that TUFSU, Lake, and Anonymous, have refused to compromise principal for dollars on many occasions. Myself, every idea and concept EVER shared with the City of Jacksonville, has been of passion, not money. Sure I wouldn't mind being paid, but when job crosses ideals, well lets just say they probably wouldn't have to put up with me very long. So maybe we are the "4 good guys," that will change the face of Jacksonville and Florida forever... THAT would be one hell of an epitaph.

OCKLAWAHA

Quote from: CS Foltz on December 12, 2009, 07:25:13 PM
In fact I seldom trust most people......since most have an agenda that concerns them and them only. 

true for everybody CS!