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No one has talked about the human cost of travel.  Rail is 25 times less lethal in terms of highway fatalities.  Why do we not value human lives, when we could eliminate 96% of fatalities by shifting highway miles to rail miles?

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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Chris Warner's description of the Governor's commitment to rail is encouraging, but the fact is that on the Oregon.gov website, the current budget cutback plan is to axe fully half of the existing Amtrak Cascades trains.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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Conventional rail  can make a significant impact on our transportation congestion and emissions, without exorbitant investments.  All that is needed is political leadership to make the investment in infrastructure and equipment.

High-speed rail is like trying to run before you have learned to walk.  Convention rail is not "highly expensive" as a speaker recently described high-speed rail.  Conventional rail can be incrementally upgraded to 79 MPH, which is the fastest form of land transportation in the US.  Modest additional improvements can raise speeds beyond 79 MPH.  Simply decreasing the 3.5-hour time to Seattle to 2.5 hours would raise ridership tremendously.  Adding more trips from Portland to Eugene would likewise expand ridership.

Washington and California both have forged public/private partnerships with the conventional freight railroads that permit highly effective conventional rail travel.  Oregon is several years behind its neighborsing states in creating this sort of mutually-beneficial relationship with the freight railroads in Oregon.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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I support the sentiments of previous posters that "too big to fail" is a non-sequitur. It simply means "too big." Our anti-trust laws seem to have failed us, if they have allowed automotive manufacturers to grow so large they can extort ransom from our treasury under the threat of mass unemployment. How is "pay the ransom if you want to see your daughter alive" any different from "give us $25 billion or we'll put millions of people out of work"? If GM has been too blind to read the handwriting on the wall regarding peak oil, and has continued to produce heavy, expensive gas-guzzlers, then perhaps they deserve to fail, or at least to be severely down-sized.

Why not provide the *citizens* a safety net of enhanced unemployment insurance coverage and a re-training allowance for the workers (NOT the high-paid executives), along with consideration for mortgages held by the affected workers. Then, let the corporation succeed or fail on its own merits, and stand firm against demands to have the public shoulder losses while executives reap bonuses.

The idea that profits should be privatized, while losses become a public liability is ridiculous.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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Consider United States Congressional postage privileges. Do Senators and Reps. get truly free postage for official correspondence, or is there some sort of flat fee tucked away somewhere in the federal budget, that is paid to the US Postal Service as compensation for Congressional postage privileges? If there is no such flat fee, and Congress does receive truly free postage, then why cannot the US Postal Service likewise pick up the tab for the voters' official business of determining said Congresspersons, other elected officials, and ballot measures?

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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You ask what political ads offend or amuse me.... Not to be a suck-up or anything, but I find that most advertisements are non-sensical, non-rational and pander to the lowest common denominator in consumers. Consequently, my TV rarely if ever leaves channel 10. I have not had to endure a single offensive or misleading political advertisement -- or indeed, any ads at all -- in quite some time. Instead, I get the information I need to make my political decisions, without a bunch of misleading half-truths from political parties or monied special interest groups. If viewers find political ads objectionable, they should re-examine their media choices.

Jim Long
Sellwood

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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