2002 Kentucky Statewide Rail Plan

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) has recently issued the 2002 Kentucky Statewide Rail Plan. The plan is the result of an 18 month study that “identifies system-wide strategies and policies and conforms to the goals established in the Cabinet’s 2001 strategic plan, provides a vehicle to identify future rail issues to meet Federal Railroad Administration requirements for federal funding as such funding becomes available, and it serves as a valuable source of statistical information regarding rail transportation in Kentucky.”

“The plan should serve as a means of heightening awareness of the significance of rail transportation throughout the Commonwealth,” said KYTC Secretary James C. Codell, III. “It is important to note that our rail system is a major element of our transportation system in Kentucky. Rail carries approximately the same amount of freight as does our interstates.”

The Kentucky Statewide Rail Plan addresses the following three main parts:

  • Rail System
  • Rail Safety
  • Rails To Trails Program

I’m excited that one of the major goals of the plan is to promote rail system preservation. Much of the rails-to-trails language in the plan will be familiar to rail-trail supporters. The plan includes a discussion of the pros and cons for rails to trails projects, including the viewpoint of the railroads. There’s also brief descriptions of current rail-trail projects and rail-trail supporting organizations.

Go to the website for the 2002 Kentucky Statewide Rail Plan or go directly to the rails to trails chapter (needs Adobe Acrobat reader).

CSS Cursors

I’ve been working on a testcase for Mozilla bug 163174 to help improve the various pointer styles available in Mozilla. For tests and examples of pretty much every known CSS2 and CSS3 cursor style, see my CSS cursor testcase. It’s nice that Mozilla 1.4 unexpectedly supports a number of “proprietary” cursor styles, but it would be less necesary if they’d just fix bug 38447. Indeed, the discussion in bug 189719 that added the zoom in and zoom out styles said as much.

Tweaking Mozilla 1.4

I’ve upgraded my Mozilla 1.3.1 install to the Mozilla 1.4 milestone and I’m pleased with it. Mozilla 1.4 is the best Mozilla yet. Here’s a few of the improvements I noticed: the chevron menu for the personal toolbar that shows up if you have too many items, improved bookmark drag and drop behavior, go to line in view source, and clicking on an error in JavaScript console takes you to error line in view source. There are also changes in the preferences including a terrible UI for configuring the launch options for startup, new windows and new tabs, but at least you can do it.

I find that I still need to do fair amount of tweaking and reconfiguring before I’m ready to use it. I put together a page that shows my typical Mozilla Tweaks.

I’ve also played with Netscape 7.1 which is basically identical to Mozilla 1.4. Compared to 7.02, it is a huge improvement. As a web developer, I’ve very thankful that a custom install of Netscape 7.1 includes a developer pack with the DOM viewer, JavaScript debugger, and Chatzilla. Of course those tools have been available in Mozilla for ages, but it’s good Netscape decided to include them in the branded release. If you need to use Netscape, 7.1 is terrific.