Dear Editor,
Cheers for the Santa Clara Valley Intermodal Facility, which disappeared beneath bulldozers last week without tribute or fanfare from our elected leaders, and only one fond “farwell” as I watched it put up a bitter resistence, then finally fade into our transport history, leaving us the largest urban area in North America without an intermodal facility.
Jeers to local leaders who would rather add more taxes on the backs of small business to fund public-sector transit boondoggles than even think about private sector solutions.
Cheers to the many South County men and women who worked to make those intermodal shipments of our local products flow into the stream of commerce over many decades, like Gilroy’s Al Navaroli, who’s too modest to admit that he’s called the Godfather of Intermodal, and my late friend Bill Lindsteadt, who sent me to Union Pacific’s headquarters in Omaha in 1997 to pitch his intermodal facility plans to their intermodal chief.
Jeers to City Councilmen who add fees to motorists’ burdens, expecting that they can afford it. They remind me of the medieval physicians sticking more blood-sucking leeches on dying patients, not knowing the harm they were inflicting.
Cheers to any elected official who privatizes any of the wasteful tax-dependent, small business killing socialist transit boondoggles that motorists are forced by our leaders to 99 percent subsidize while paying 100 percent of our own expenses.
How long until our leaders assume we will put up with this?
Joe Thompson, Gilroy
