Welland Canal

Through this whole process has anybody mentioned the obvious?
How many manhours for the lock crews would it take to equal the cost of 90 million dollars installation, plus the high salary technicians needed for the central control center, plus whatever it costs to maintain these machines over their lives. Not to mention that most of that money for the machines is laid out up front.

Sounds like someone has a friend on the budget commission. Which reminds me, add it the money paid to those who got this pushed through, lobbyists, lawyers and what have you.

Or perhaps the Union and their bullying has pushed them into it. A 72 hour strike, do you know how much cargo that is going to screw up......I couldn't even imagine.

I sat in a plane at the terminal here in Ft. Laud about a month ago for an hour. Why, it started raining!!!!!! They had loaded all of the people and all of the suitcases except 10 and it started raining and the ground crew went inside until it stopped (heavy sprinkle). Meanwhile I see plane after plane taking off and landing. So you have 140 people all missing connecting flights and this and that because you didn't load the last 10 suitcases......many people on the plane were stuck in Atlanta because the next flight was the last one for the day. I had to run through the entire airport and made it with 10 minutes to spare.....

I figure the magnet things will save them $5.5million each year starting now.....but a lot more 10 years and 20 years down the road..... 21 people x 24 hours x $30hr (salary/benefits)x365 days = $5.52mill.

Ummm,
Saving $5.52 million per year justifies an outlay of $90 million? That puts the break even point at 16.3 years not counting the maintenance costs, expert technician cost and replacement cost (yes it will undoubtedly need to be replaced by the latest and greatest within 20 years. Then there's the interest paid on that up front $90 million cost.

I'll stick with "Sounds like someone has a friend on the budget commission". Deal in big enough money and nobody notices it being siphoned off. I'd be livid if I paid taxes there. In fact I'd probably make it a regular practice of sabatoging the equipment so they'd be forced to hire locals to fix it, since there'll be no humans there to watch over the equipment. Or will they replace the workers with police. Yep, that'll save money.

Actually my salary figure is probably way lower than it actually is (including benefits) considering it's Union and in Canada. Ohhh wait, they also get a pension for life.....I'd be willing to bet that each employee is costing them $60 an hour and that brings it to $11mil a year savings.



Neptunus lowest employee was getting paid $68 an hour including all of the benefits, before they went out of business in 2008 ish and were bought out. The problem is, the Unions keep tightening the noose on the horse so much, that they ended up choking and killing the horse.
NYCAP, how can a boat builder stay in business when the guy sweeping up the floor is costing the company $68 an hour???

The question is, how are the lack of employees going to effect yachts? Really, the employees haven't assisted me when locking through the Welland aside from throwing the lines over the side.......

If a business doesn't support the community they have no right to exist. When the employees go the business should be shut. Let the suffering go all the way to the top. First the executives should go without salary before a single wage earner loses his job. If the canal doesn't provide jobs let it be shut. I'm sure to locals will start trucking companies to bring the the cargo across. Of course then the shipping companies will scream. Let those protests be heard only as clearly as the community's protests as their homes are foreclosed on.

Every company that wants to do business in an area comes in claiming it'll produce jobs. They don't ask to come in by saying it'll make the CEO rich. When they cease producing good jobs, close them down. Let's see how the executives like not earning a salary or the banks like not being repaid.

Like I've said, my business philosophy is not a popular one today. It prevents CEO's form owning mutiple $20 million homes and 300' yachts. But it also prevents revolutions.

From a business standpoint I would have to see far more than the information I have to justify it. Even assuming Capt J's numbers, assuming an annual return of $5 million or even make it $10 million if you wish, I wouldn't do it. But this is a different between business, government and personal.

While systems are sold to people for their homes all the time on the basis of 7 or 8 year paybacks and government projects do the same, most well run businesses don't. The reason is that they have a certain amount of funds available for capital expenditures. Generally we could always find some places to spend that would provide 3 year or shorter paybacks. In more difficult times we'd look for 1 year and amazing how many we could find. Never do I recall approving anything over 5 years. One might say that 8 or 9 years is still good. But it's not good when your funds are limited and you have another project that is 3 years. Hence the difference between a well run business and a government entity. The business treats funds as limited.

Now for a Canadian example of looking at payback and not going to new technology. The Big Chute Marine Railway. For decades there has been talk of putting in a dam and lock. But the justification has just never been satisfactory to get it done.

First, you are talking about a government and not a company and no CEO involved. BTW, do you not think that executives do not have families to support and expenses??? I think if company takes a cut in pay, it should be evenly across the board, but to cut the pay off of executives completely??? Why do you want to punish someone for being successful and good at what they do, and they're just working a job just like anyone else? When you run a boat, you sure seem to want to get paid top rate. Why not work for 1/2 as much???? Perhaps that would allow your customers to take their family out boating more often. Why should it be any different for anyone else?

The Welland canal enables the top half of the Country and Southern half of Canada to survive. There is NO way that tractor trailers could haul a smigeon that the freighters do in necessary goods, from coal to food. The top half of our country and bottom half of Canada would severely be hurt if the canal closed. What you're talking about NYCAP is equivalent to shutting down I-95 on the east coast. It would cripple them. Do you realize that one of those 15 barge tows you'll see on your trip, equals 1050 tractor trailers, do you know how many tractor trailer loads it would take to equal one ship??? Not to mention the effect on the environment in emmissions. Not to mention the $90 million spent on the technology has created jobs for the people making them, installing them, and on and on. The canal charges yachts and ships to pass through it, how do you know the taxpayers are paying anything?

The new system is probably an effort to increase the speed in which ships get through the locks. There are more and more ships and you can only get one through at a time, there's only one place where two ships can pass. Technology changes things all of the time and so has our need for goods and raw materials as our population has grown.

Here's a pleasant thought:

Limo drivers and driverless vehicles.


P.S.- How about driverless taxis?


P.P.S.- How about Captainless port entry/exist?

Or forums without people?

Here's a novel for your reading pleasure during your winter hiatus: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.


Synopsis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle


P.S.- Know anyone in government from Chicago.

Personless keyboard Forums

Great idea.

Just imagine the bandwidth savings.

There are other considerations that may make more sense out of the changes proposed. And technology and advancement doesn't in total eliminate jobs. It eliminates just specific jobs. Saying these changes make sense, which I don't have the information to know, then isn't the next part of it "finding new jobs for the displaced workers?"

I hate to see any jobs lost as much as anyone, other than those who are actually losing the jobs. Perhaps though it will increase canal efficiency and ultimately traffic. That could bring more jobs in other ways. Certainly maintaining the equipment will create jobs and those will likely be higher paying than the jobs being eliminated. We lose sight sometimes that with all the jobs eliminated the last 20 years, there are 27 million more jobs in the US today than there were 20 years ago.

Now back to the canal.

Careful. We could be replaced with bots.

A.I. bots doing battle with A.I. Admins.

Well, at least Carl could get some sleep,

while his A.I. counter-part battles the Black Hatters.

Rodger...all you say makes perfect sense.

It does explain the savings that are beyond those working there.

And I also agree leaving one person for safety does make sense, especially at the beginning. Then, if over the years you do find that person isn't doing anything, let attrition gradually reduce them.

Based on what you know, do you think damage to the ships and the locks will increase or decrease with this?

Are you attributing the longer time to get through to more traffic or to the changes?

Rodger:

As to the Welland Canal, I think it's an incredible history starting in 1824. Now I know the plan or dream was for the 5th Welland Canal to replace this one, the 4th, by 2030. Is that still foreseen? Or are improvements like these expected to extend the life of this one?

The biggest issue with the ships is only fore or aft movement. The ship is 78' wide and the lock is 80' wide, so basically there is nowhere to go from side to side. I wonder why they decided to use suction instead of electro-magnetic as all of the ships are steel (for the most part). If the ship is touching the 3" steel cable to keep it from going foward, I think that would be strong enough to hold it. But those questions are above my pay grade....hehehe