Sacrificing old growth redwoods for cattle trucks

Cal Trans plans to widen the stretch of 101 highway that goes through Richardson State Park in order to accommodate larger trucks. Evidently local cattlemen have been successful in rallying business owners dependent on trucking to pressure Cal Trans into proposing this latest bit of commercial attack on ancient redwoods.

I used to live at Bridgewood, right at the edge of Richardson State Park and I used to walk through the groves there nearly everyday going to work at Heartsook Inn and Singing Trees restaurant when they were still in operation. If there is anything out of place in those beautiful groves it is the constant sight of large trucks barreling the through the groves as fast as the law allows.

I don't know what's wrong with community planners that allows us to carry on a transportation technology that is so utterly wasteful or non-renewable resources as if there were no such thing as cost effectiveness. Do any of us really realize how much of our money is being spent to shore up a technology that should have changed decades ago.

I'm talking about mass transit systems and the current ancient one is eating us alive in increasing costs that make no sense when compared to developing alternative transport systems. How much oil is used to making these highways? How much oil is used fueling the big trucks that are almost the sole responsible agents for highway destruction?

Cars aren't heavy enough to impact road beds but big trucks do yet is is the general taxpayer paying constantly for road repairs for all these big trucks and the inadequate highway system that supports them.

If I hadn't myself without any formal technological education thought of a rationale alternative mass transit system perhaps I would be more sympathetic to the existing system. But I did think of a system way back in 1976 and it's now, what? 31 years later and we are still paying to “fix” these highways that never get fixed.

My solution was the development of a “Solar Rail” system, a new type of monorail system where the monorail itself is one long continuous solar collector feeding electricity into the system everywhere the sun in shining. Instead of road beds needing constant repairs we build monorails on adjustable piers through land that is prone to shifting with the rains.

With the monorail up above the ground and winding through the forests avoiding any old growth trees we save these ancient beings instead of knocking them down so cows can go off to the slaughterhouse and our hamburgers won't cost quite as much.

Below is the 1976 original idea that still needs to be done to stop energy inefficient cars and trucks and the wasteful highway

ead with dismay th

system becoming the most important items in a community's economic development plans.

The Solar Rail System

"Imagine the highways and freeways gone. No cars, no trucks, no exhaust pollution, no noise pollution, no dead animals lying on the sides of the road.

Imagine no huge Cal-Trans budget and tax burden because the roads are gone. Imagine no more CHP tickets and no more fossil fuel cars.

Imagine all the money saved if California had a state-wide mass transit system that fueled itself with electricity generated by the Sun.

Imagine the thousands of acres of highway road beds turned into forests and organic farms and quiet villages where people and animals can safely cross underneath a quiet electro-magnetic monorail system where the monorail itself contains a thousands of miles long solar collecting system that catches, stores, and releases electricity from the sun supplying all the power needed to run both passenger and freight monorail trains throughout California.

This is the future. This is the promise of the Solar Rail System for the 21st Century."

This was the future 31 years ago. Why wait any longer to have a better, cheaper mass transit system than the one in place that now forces removal of trees people come from all across the nation to see? Is this responsible forest management?