Posted on 08/09/2015 8:35:10 AM PDT by george76
With little income generated by the canals themselves — recreational revenue is about $165,000 a year, commercial only $40,000 — the cost of operating them is now covered largely with highway tolls collected by the Thruway Authority. And the roughly $55 million operating budget for the canals accounted for a large chunk of the $78.5 million in losses the authority reported during the 2014 fiscal year. On top of that are annual capital investments in the tens of millions of dollars to maintain and improve the system.
The burden falls largely on highway toll-payers because of a decision in 1992 to shift control of the canals from the transportation department to the Thruway Authority.
...
A federal court ruled this past week that a suit filed by trucking industry interests should be reinstated. The suit argues the use of tolls to subsidize the canal system is unfair. If the Thruway Authority loses, the state will have to come up with another way to fund the canals because New York is bound by its constitution to maintain it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Yeah. Low ridge should definitely remember it.
Here in our backyard we have a scenic river which actually supports scores of private businesses it's entire length. These range from large canoe and kayak outfitters to mom and pop snack and bait shops.
Interestingly enough you can find abandoned parts of the original Erie Canal actually doing this on a scaled down basis.
>>”Anyone who drives a car or truck knows our roads are crumbling,” he said in an interview. “Toll money should be used to fix roads.”
That’s crazy talk. Those political patronage jobs maintaining an obsolete canal need to be maintained!
/s, just in case.
LOL! California and New York, two of the most populous states, which are OWNED by progtards, constantly bilk their taxpeasants and screw things up in general.
Trains would have eventually killed the canals but trains didn’t really hit their stride till immediately following the civil war when our attention returned to westward expansion.
Are those contemporary pictures of the actual canal controlled by the state? Or of the older abandoned sections which have been privatized or localised?
Thanks george76.
I had forgotten that the Eire Canal is one of many canals that cross NY state.
"The Erie Canal is the largest of the four canals in New York State's 524-mile canal system. The others are the Champlain, which runs from Troy to Lake Champlain; the Oswego, from the Syracuse area to Lake Ontario, and the Cayuga-Seneca, which branches from the Erie Canal to the Finger Lakes."
3 mph is the speed limit for most travel.
Maybe the Teamsters should fire their execs and spend that money on their history.
Michigan owes its existence to that canal.
The first great American project of its kind. It was almost the 19th century version of the Apollo program. But it may be best to let nature reclaim it or preserve a section of it for a museum if Clinton’s ditch just can’t pay for itself.
$55 MILLION annual expenses and $0.2 MILLION annual income.
Lecture us again, Obama, about public “investment in infrastructure.” Only government would do something so incredibly stupid as this...and their excuse is “The state constitution made me do it.” The constitution doesn’t mean jack-sh1t to any pol these days, yet they hide behind its skirts when they want to.
Both
I’m less than 5 minutes from the Ohio and Erie Canal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_and_Erie_Canal.
Low bridge, everybody down! I remember the song from grade school.
I didn’t realize they had toll fees for the locks, maybe they should raise those fees instead and cut the road tolls.
http://www.canals.ny.gov/boating/tolls.html
Canal Map with lock locations, speeds, etc.
http://www.canals.ny.gov/maps/
I drive next to a portion of Champlain Canal frequently, Route 4 runs right next to it, does have some barge traffic.
You asked if the Erie Canal can be turned into a “highway”.
It would be much cheaper and quicker if Obama, using his power as America’s most powerful “word-smith”, simply re-defined “The New York Thruway” as “The Erie Canal”.
Then the former REAL “Erie Canal” (all three of them) could be abandoned.
We sang it a lot, growing up in upstate, NY. I lived a couple miles from the canal in Fayetteville, NY. I always loved that tune sung with a good manly baritone.
And the ironic part is that the South probably financed 75% of the construction cost as three out of four dollars collected at the federal level came from the south (mainly VA, GA, SC & NC)..
Bulldoze it if it’s a federal money pit or let NY state fund it. I’m more than confident federal dollars worm their way into the canal coffers.
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