Peoria Illinoisan

As some of you are well aware, there was a Kellar Trail-only pep rally at Vonachen’s yesterday.

WEEK had a decent report with no mis-information as far as I could discern, even taking the time to interview Mike Carr of Pioneer Rail, although calling it the old Kellar Branch Rail Line three times seemed a bit over the top.

1470 ran this quote:

David Pittman, the Vice President of Recreation Trail Advocates, says the recent use of the rail line should not sway people against the trail. he said the railroad engine was ran due to a clause that said if nothing is run on the line the railroad operators lose some of their rights. He said no freight was ran on the line.

First of all, I do not believe there is any clause about rail operators losing their rights, and the comment about having no freight run on the line is to insinuate that there is no business. The fact of the matter is, Pioneer Rail ran the train up the Kellar Branch as a test and is parked next to Carver Lumber waiting to run back down and pick up it’s first load in a long long time. By no fault of it’s own, I might add.

Now comes the Journal Star article about the rally and how all three 18th district candidates want to change federal law so we can get rid of the old unused tracks. Besides a goofy quote of Schock “A company just cannot continue to claim rights to land it does not own if they have not been paying rent and refuse to pay market value rent in the future,” the entire article was nothing but a reprint of what they wrote down in a prepared statement. They weren’t in attendance!

Let’s quit with the pep rallys and false information. A group has been put together to study the feasibility of a side by side rail and trail. Let’s see if it can be done. If not, let’s start looking at other options such as running a trail along the length of the river and going up Grandview Drive, connecting to a side by side in the heights or near Junction City. I refuse to accept the notion that there is only one option and I don’t understand the mindset of people who continue to mislead and blatantly lie in an effort to get what they want under the guise of economic development while at the same time trying to run current and future business out of town.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.