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After 190 years, NY's Erie Canal a relic with a hefty cost
AP ^ | August 9, 2015 | George M. Walsh

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California; US: New York; US: Ohio; US: Pennsylvania; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: canal; commutertrains; davisbacon; eriecanal; gasolinetaxes; godsgravesglyphs; highspeedrail; highway; highwaytaxes; highwaytolls; taxes; tollpayers
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

“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.


41 posted on 08/09/2015 10:56:39 AM PDT by BwanaNdege (.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
I’d pick a nice 52 foot Sea Ray with an experienced captain, my wife and a few friends...

"Low Bridge, everybody down..." That was for those flat barges.

42 posted on 08/09/2015 11:24:19 AM PDT by GingisK
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Not a fan of Him but he does a great version here [Springsteen} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koj5yGigFNU


43 posted on 08/09/2015 12:10:03 PM PDT by ABN 505 (Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. ~Archbishop Fulton John)
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To: george76

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.


44 posted on 08/09/2015 12:15:19 PM PDT by djf ("It's not about being nice, it's about being competent!" - Donald Trump)
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To: Original Lurker

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.


45 posted on 08/09/2015 12:29:26 PM PDT by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat/RINO Party!)
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To: ifinnegan

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.


46 posted on 08/09/2015 1:27:16 PM PDT by Vermont Lt
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To: mrsmith

Well, that’s good to know ‘bout the canal.
Still, 3/4 US$ federal TAXES came from the Southern states (VA, NC, SC, GA).


47 posted on 08/09/2015 4:01:09 PM PDT by Original Lurker
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To: george76

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.


48 posted on 08/09/2015 4:02:51 PM PDT by Conan the Librarian (The Best in Life is to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and the Dewey Decimal System)
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To: george76

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.


49 posted on 08/09/2015 4:26:54 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

Do it before they shut her down.

You can rent a canal boat, and captain it yourself. We have done it twice.


50 posted on 08/09/2015 4:28:56 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Thanks for the flag.


51 posted on 08/09/2015 4:31:28 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: Conan the Librarian

There are sailors who unstep their masts for the trip.


52 posted on 08/09/2015 4:37:19 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: george76

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.


53 posted on 08/09/2015 4:42:54 PM PDT by COBOL2Java (I'll vote for Jeb when Terri Schiavo endorses him.)
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To: ifinnegan

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?


54 posted on 08/09/2015 4:44:34 PM PDT by pfony1 (Let's welcome some Democrat congressmen into the Republican party and OVERRIDE!)
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To: Bigg Red

Ours is keel stepped. It would be difficult at best to do so.


55 posted on 08/09/2015 4:56:26 PM PDT by Conan the Librarian (The Best in Life is to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and the Dewey Decimal System)
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To: george76
it was already dead when the Thruway took it over it, now... well
56 posted on 08/09/2015 5:02:10 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -w- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Conan the Librarian

Oh, okay, I see.

What do you have?


57 posted on 08/09/2015 5:32:19 PM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
I doubt a 52 foot Sea Ray would fit in the canal. These were dug with pick and shovel by Irish immigrants in the 1820's. They are not that wide or deep. But they are a key element in the opening of the west and deserve to be preserved.

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.

58 posted on 08/09/2015 6:09:27 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard (Matthews and)
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To: cripplecreek
Rail did kill the canals, plain and simple. That's why they died. No two ways about that. We have the Ohio Canal, linking the Ohio River with Lake Erie. Like all these eastern canals, it was a casualty of advancing technology and timing. A railroad could go from Cleveland to the Ohio River a whole lot faster and carry a lot more freight than canal boats ever could.
59 posted on 08/09/2015 6:15:11 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard (Matthews and)
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To: texas booster
Prior to the development of steam powered locomotion, canals were the state of the art for freight and transportation across the mountains and into the West (ie western NY, Penn, Ohio and points West). No Teamsters unions in 1860.
60 posted on 08/09/2015 6:26:40 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard (Matthews and)
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