it was already dead when the Thruway took it over it, now... well
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 ...
“I’d like to sail down the Erie Canal from Lake Erie just to see and feel the age of this creation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97PI3HOXYZQ
NARROWBOATS - A NOVICES GUIDE TO NARROWBOATING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat
A narrowboat or narrow boat is a boat of a distinctive design, made to fit the narrow canals of the United Kingdom.
In the context of British Inland Waterways, “narrow boat” refers to the original working boats built in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals (where locks and bridge holes would have a minimum width of 7 feet (2.1 m); some locks on the Shropshire Union are even smaller). The term is extended to modern “narrowboats” used for recreation and more and more as homes, whose design and dimensions are an interpretation of the old boats for modern purposes and modern materials.
"Low Bridge, everybody down..." That was for those flat barges.
Not a fan of Him but he does a great version here [Springsteen} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koj5yGigFNU
When I was very young we visited my grandfather who lived in a place on the canal, almost a shack.
It had concrete sides on it with a bit of a slope. Us kids would sit on the slope and dangle our feet in the water, that kind of stuff.
Well I slipped and went in! Not having any deep water around my house, heck, I couldn’t swim then - I was probably six or so.
Then... ker-splash! My old man jumped in and saved me! Everyone had a good laugh and I got chewed out, old man had another beer, all was good.
Grandfather died in 66 and seems it was 5 years or so before then.
Absolutely not. That wasn’t done in those days.
Famously President Madison vetoed at the end of his term a public works bill with federal funding for canals and roads.
Good constitutionalism but bad policy.
The canal’s construction was financed entirely without federal funding.
Nowadays other states are probably paying a fortune for it in one way or another though.
Ummm.....its water. Kind of hard to drive on it.
But seriously, it looks like a river with the occasional lock. I90 is right next to it most of the way to Buffalo.
Well, that’s good to know ‘bout the canal.
Still, 3/4 US$ federal TAXES came from the Southern states (VA, NC, SC, GA).
Many of those canals are very popular with boaters. There is a whole class of folks who do the “Great Loop” by starting out somewhere like Chicago, go down the canals to the Mississippi, around the intra-coastal to New York, though the canals to the Erie and then back to Chicago.
Unfortunately, our 48 ft mast will never go up any of those canals.
We have traveled the Erie Canal twice. Really enjoyed it, but we frequently remarked about the fact that it has to be a waste of money for the state of NY.
Do it before they shut her down.
You can rent a canal boat, and captain it yourself. We have done it twice.
Thanks for the flag.
There are sailors who unstep their masts for the trip.
My great-grandfather was an Erie canal boatman. He was a Canadian who lived in Watervliet, New York. He married an Indian woman and sired two children, one of whom was my maternal grandmother.
My great-grandmother died giving birth to my grandmother, and he dropped both kids off at an orphanage. Quite a guy, eh? In a way it was a blessing in disguise, because my grandmother received a wonderful religious education at the hands of those nuns. She grew up and eventually met a wonderful man, and the rest, as they say, was history. :-)
My mother told me she met him (the boatman who abandoned her mother and uncle at the orphanage) a couple of times. She said he was not a nice person.
You said, “I’m not...”
I’m sorry I was not more clear.
Since 1825, the Erie Canal has provided a waterway between Buffalo and Albany. That canal lowered the cost of shipping freight from the old Midwest to Eastern and foreign markets. The trade that resulted made New York City a more important seaport than Philadelphia and Baltimore.
As time passed, the old Erie Canal was improved. Some new sections were built to replace narrow, shallow sections. So, in some locations, the “current” canal runs parallel to one or two abandoned older sections.
NOW, what I tried unsuccessfully to suggest is that in our modern age:
1. where a treaty is NOT a “Treaty”, and
2. where a “fine” is really a “tax”, and
3. where “...established by a State...” legally means “...established by a State OR BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT...”
it should be relatively easy to find someone in authority to say:
“The Constitution of New York State requires New York State to maintain the Erie Canal, without defining precisely what “The Eire Canal IS! Therefore we need only declare that “The New York Thruway”, which supports travel primarily by car and by truck, is hereafter, for all legal purposes, “The Erie Canal”. This new definition will allow us to transfer maintenance funds from the “old” canal to the Thruway, without violating the Constitution.”
Are we clever or what?
Ours is keel stepped. It would be difficult at best to do so.
it was already dead when the Thruway took it over it, now... well
Oh, okay, I see.
What do you have?
Clearly, they no longer serve for transportation purposes, having been replaced by rail roads and the Great National Road in the mid 1800's. Nevertheless, these canals opened the frontier for commerce and trade and lace the Great Lakes region from NY State through Ohio and westward. As linear parks, surviving stretches in Ohio are being preserved along with their towpath trails, and locks/dams at various points serve as historical markers.
If we really want to provide some continuity with the early days of the Republic, we need to respect and maintain these legacies.
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