by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

We are such a bunch of dweebs! Like it takes a bunch of experts to tell us Reliance on freight trucks threatens state's livelihood. In fact, they go so far as to call on our "acting" governor, Richard Cody, to form a group to study the problem. Hell, I can save 'em the trouble: If the freight in question is destined for a New Jersey consignee who is more than five miles from a freight siding, it can come into the state on a truck. Other than that, it gets put on a train for transport either to consignee or across the state. For freight coming from our ports, once it hits either the Pennsylvania, Delaware or New York borders, it becomes those states' problem(s). For freight coming into the state and destined for our ports, it gets put on a freight train at the border for transport to it's destination. For freight coming from the south or west and destined for New England, again it gets put on a train at our southern or western border and, when it hits New York, then that soveriegn state can decide whether to let it off the train and back on the roads or not.

Rail transport is both economically and environmentally superior to trucks. With containers to encourage efficient lading, there is no reason why most long distance freight should not move most of the way by rail. Also, appropos of trucks on the highways, there was this little bit about a jacknifing tractor-trailor on the front page of today's Curious News. Lets get these trucks back to doing short haul and, in doing so, make our air quality better, our use of fossil fuels less and our roads safer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005