What Not To Do
The current Solano Rail plan is an environmental and financial disaster waiting to happen
* The plan was born of a broken political process where the legally incorporated cities of the county got together and divided up the political pie. This ignored factors critical to rail success, such as essential demographic data, and also gave no voice to one of the most important local entities: Travis Air Force Base.
* The planned Benicia Station will be the "Venice" of California, steadily sinking into the marsh, have little to no ability to foster local development around it because it is in a critical protected wetland, and is a potential GLOBAL environmental disaster waiting to happen due to Suisun Marsh's role in the Pacific Flyway.
* It threatens to encourage the closure of Travis Air Force Base which is not only the single largest employer in the county but also one of only two Superfund Sites in the county. Its closure would gut the county financially while leaving behind an environmental cleanup nightmare and also result in imposing these same environmental risks on some NEW site somewhere on the West Coast.
From a previous website, now offline:
In the years since I did the research, one of the three planned stations had its grand opening in April 2018. Although millions of dollars were spent, this station is a threat to Travis AFB, so it is a threat to more than a billion dollars annually in local revenue. So I think it would make sense to shut it down and go with the sites my analysis suggest are generally superior to the existing plan.
Maybe you've never heard of me, but I appear to be the highest ranked woman on Hacker News and posted my work on the Solano Rail plan on Hacker News in July 2020. I believe odds are high that Amtrak officials and people in power in Solano County are likely familiar with the fact that my rail plan exists and my general opinions on the current plan.
And my alternate plan has never gotten traction and never will. I predict that after decades of making noises about moving Travis AFB elsewhere on the West Coast to save money -- because California is extremely expensive, especially the Bay area, and military members are paid Cost of Living Allowance plus area appropriate Housing Allowance -- we will likely see this base moved, possibly in the near future.
My understanding is Travis can serve its mission from ANYWHERE on the West Coast.
Hopefully they move it to Oregon and not Washington. Having spent a few years living in the coastal Washington area, I learned that the TV show The Simpsons is "inspired by" that region and my firsthand experience with applying for a community development job with a Main Street program and attending public meetings and having my ideas stolen and botched, etc, suggests to me the dysfunctional characters in that show are a reasonable representation of that area.
It is more dysfunctional politically than California's rail development process. I agree with the French in that regard and hold out little hope that California will ever get its act together in that regard.
California will likely bull on ahead with also building the Benicia station in a protected wetlands and it will become the Venice of California, steadily sinking into the marsh like the rails in that area have a long history of doing, requiring regular remedy. And odds are high that once the station is built there, they will start seeking "exceptions" and special permits for additional development in critical habitat of the Pacific Flyway.
Damaging critical habitat in the Pacific Flyway is a potential GLOBAL environmental disaster interfering with long distance bird migrations and breeding of many birds species that aren't simply local to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maybe the federal government will step in and say "That's a NO from me, land of fruits and nuts." Because I have no faith that the state of California or Solano County or Amtrak will do what makes sense here.
Given California's high cost of living and its tendency to make noises about seceding from the US, I would not be shocked if this gets all federal facilities in California studied by someone with a lot more insider information than I have and facilities moved to nearby states as appropriate for their needs. It would cut costs for the federal government and reduce the threat represented by potential secession of the state.
"Cascadia" (the states of the Pacific Northwest), Alaska and other parts of the US sometimes make noises about seceding. California seems the most plausible threat in that regard. It's perhaps unwise to let them retain too many key pieces of the US defense assets, especially at nosebleed prices while people have a fit on a regular basis about excess federal spending.
My presentation dates to 2003. It is currently 2025. If Travis AFB gets shut down and those military assets get moved elsewhere, all I've got to say is:
"Told you so!"
Footnote
If I recall correctly, the second largest employer in Solano County after Travis AFB is -- or was two decades ago and likely still is -- the school system. Not exactly a revenue generator for the local economy and good luck keeping them funded after running off your cash cow.
