A MASSIVE road four football fields wide and running from Mexico to Canada through the heartland of the United States is being proposed amid controversy over security and the damage to the environment.
I've begun seeing rumors of this thing here and there, but no real hard reporting. If it's true, I don't like it. Do any of you Rantburgers know anything about it?
#2
Ok, this is a purely tec. question, but would it not be much more efficient to build a rail line instead of a giant supper highway. I have always thought trains were the most effected way of moving goods on land.
Matt
Posted by: matt ||
06/17/2006 1:05 Comments ||
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#3
Will expedite illegal immigration aka "transnational citizenry" migration.
_______________________
Security, what security? Aren't we all "citizens of the world"? //Sarcasm off
#4
If this follows the Texas proposal, it will also have rail, pipelines and telecom.
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2006 1:56 Comments ||
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#5
Folks, you can be reasonably certain that any and every politician pushing this has a wife, husband, brother, sister, mother, father, cousin, and/or 'good friend' who just happens to own a big piece of land along the proposed route.
#7
From the evidence available thus far, Kelo / eminent domain only applies to those without connections and influence, y'know, regular flyover sheeple.
Thanks, DMFD, and agreed - this really does reeeeeeek to high heaven.
#9
Interesting. Fred you've got something odd in your syntax checking code (aka The Boris Code, lol). The first link was wrapped around the text "Binational Trade Corridors" - which just disappeared and the link was converted to text. Fascinating. I know how to post links.
Rail lines may be very efficient cost-wise, but time-wise, probably not. A load on a truck can go coast-to-coast in three days. Rail stops at every podunk little town along the way . . . .
Now if you want to get rid of any illegal cross-border activity, just route this thing around the perimiter of the US and let anybody just try to get across without a car. Anyone who makes it gets to stay. :-)
Posted by: grb ||
06/17/2006 5:16 Comments ||
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#12
duder - Dude, read #9. I didn't do that, Fred's code did. Duh, dude.
#13
I dunno. Truck driving and the railroad are the livelihoods of many working-class in the heartland and I bet they would consider the investment in our own infrastructure wise. There really aren't many good N to S roads through the Plains. The Avenue of the Saints. linking St. Paul to St. Louis was just completed, but the old road took you across a one lane privately owned toll bridge. Shipping containers go by rail or on barges up the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, but most are on tractor-trailers. I-35 already runs through mostly sparsely populated farmland in Kansas and Iowa. This adds jobs and facilitates commerce in stagnant areas of the US, as well as Mexico. This area is also in the middle of our own domestic fossil fuel fields and would connect the oil sands of Canada to the oil of Mexico. Good transportation is needed if we are going to get the North American continent energy independent. Drive through scanners and electronic tagging for trucks and cargo containers could provide security without hindering commerce.
#16
I suspect that all three nations have in mind something like this: the super-highway bisects the US North to Canada, then splits into an east-west 'T' just north of the border. The sides of the 'T' transship to northeast and northwest of both countries, and are easier to build in Canada than an east-west route in the northern US.
The southern and central east-west freeway routes are adequate for now, for the increased traffic, so don't need major modification.
The tricky part begins in Mexico, as the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) includes superhighways on both coasts. The western SH goes to California, and the eastern will probably connect through Texas. Both roads head South to the 'bottom' States, where a gigantic air, sea, rail and highway hub is planned.
From Guatemala South, it will probably be much like a newer version of the Pan-American highway, for the first time opening a major land trade route to South America, to handle the massive load of the FTAA.
From a purely logistical point of view, *some* kind of superhighway is needed, as right now the US-Mexico rail traffic is "bumper to bumper", and port traffic is maxed out. What amounts to a multi-trillion dollar trade route overwhelms most other security issues, which is not to say that they will be neglected.
Rather, security will have to be proportional to everything else.
#17
I think a train would be far better. Design it with few stops and you defeat the standard negatives of a train. Say a stop where it starts in Mexico and one at the East/West hub and another in Canada. You'd have far less issues with smuggling (people and bombs) with limited stops and trucks.
Future plans could extend the train line through the Americas to Panama. They should have done something like this in the 70s when fuel/jetfuel costs went through the roof.
Seems kind of far-fetched, but with the way things have been going... Also, I'm not that familiar with WND, so I do not know if they are credible or not. I'm sure some of the old-timers here can shed some light/opinions.
#19
Agree a huge Intermodal hub is being planned here in Kansas, big rail companies buying up land....they know stuff. Globalization wont be stopped, this is good. Huge public works projects like this keep lots of people employed and especially in Central America where jobs are badly needed. Count me as a supporter of this project.
#21
I think the plan is to put it through Idaho. All the pieces are in place and that's probably why Dirk Kempthorne was nominated to head the Department of the interior. He's been pushing for it. Keep in mind that 2 lane roads are more than adequate for the very small amount of interstate traffic in Idaho. There is barely 1 million people in the state. Bush and his friends see economic opportunity in raping the little state.
I don't have time to research it - but here are two pieces of information that I found without too much trouble.
From the Idaho Statesman: GARVEE Bonding (SB 1183): As part of the GARVEE Support Coalition, our Chamber actively supported GARVEE Bonding (Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle) that proposed to connect Idaho, north and south, with major transportation infrastructure. This bill allowed Idaho to maximize its existing resources by bonding for transportation projects, obligating a portion of the states future federal highway funds and completing projects 10 to 15 years earlier. Truly one of the "going home" bills, this legislation easily passed out of the Senate but got hung up in the House at the end of the session. After some gubernatorial "prompting" that included eight carefully selected vetoes, a compromise of several amendments to the legislation allowed House members to quickly pass SB 1183 and the Senate approved. The Governor signed the GARVEE Bonding bill into law, yesterday, in Athol, at mile post 450.9.
http://www.cdachamber.com/AboutChamber/PublicPolicy2005Accomplishments.htm
AND:link
The Idaho Legislature's approval this year allowed the state to accelerate construction that would otherwise take years to become a reality. Gov. Kempthorne's push to improve the state's highway system was the impetus for the GARVEE legislation.
The Legislature approved Idaho borrowing $1.6 billion against future federal transportation projects to fund 13 projects to improve the state highway system. The projects are planned around the entire state, including a four-lane freeway from Sandpoint to Coeur d'Alene in North Idaho; a new Snake River bridge in South-central Idaho; and a new 56-mile, four-lane divided highway through Indian Valley in Central Idaho.
#22
Personally, I'm all for promoting a sealevel canal between San Diego and Brownsville, though if things don't take a turn soon maybe from the Colorado River in AZ to Brownsville.
#1
now I remember why I never really bothered to learn the names of any but the top terrorists. There just isn't much of a point in it as they don't last long enough to matter.
The comments in the superhighway article pointed at a theoretical (or not-so-theoretical?) "North American" monetary unit, the Amero. This link appears to be a Canadian look at the possibility. I'll be offline for much of the weekend, but if these things are cooking under the surface, color me nervous.
#1
Oh, yeah. Heluva good idea. Let Vicente Fox and the Canuckistan socialists into the monetary henhouse. Kyoto didn't fly, so is this the next Tranzi idea to ruin the U.S. economy?
#6
Easier solution would be to give both parties to the north and south Commonwealth status so they can both be on the dollar. Saves them the hassle.
The case as presented is only another tranzi dream like Kyoto to try to control the American economy, but by other means. Just tell them to enjoy their soon to be annexation. Next discussion?
#10
"Yet, the United States did become a member of all of these organizations and did surrender a significant degree of national sovereignty. There are escape clauses in all of these treaties that can be invoked if the national interest is threatened seriously. Similar escape clauses are certain to be in the proposed monetary agreement. There is still much opposition to these organizations in the United States and it receives much media attention. However, political movements like those headed by Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot that make withdrawal from such organizations a major plank in their platforms have not had significant electoral successes."
Gonna actually run with that stinker of a notion, are ya? Start messing with monetary policy as it affects ordinary Americans and you haven't even seen pissed yet.
"I believe that the United States became a member and accepted the accompanying loss of national sovereignty because the benefits from doing so outweigh the costs."
Loss of sovereignty ok with any Rantburgers here?
"Increased trade, more stable economies in the rest of the world, and continuous forums for the exchange of views have increased the prosperity of Americans. The United States may be large but the rest of the world is even larger and American relationships with other countries matter to economic growth and national security. By extension, the proposed monetary agreement will benefit the United States since it is expected to improve the size and stability of the economies of Canada and Mexico; American trade and investment will grow correspondingly."
Wonder if the average voter would see it that way?
#11
An absurd idea. If Canada and Mexico want the benefits of a joint currency, all they need do is fix their monies to the US dollar, or replace their monies with the US dollar. Of course, no sooner do they do that than the problems concealed by the varying exchange rates are visible and demanding to be solved immediately, but that still isn't America's problem.
#14
American trade and investment will grow correspondingly.
Considering the Mexican Constitution and judicial practices bar foreign ownership of the best pieces of property [isolated arid dry desert anyone?] there's not going to be a lot of American investment heading south soon. Once again their own xenophobic behavior is doing them in.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
