Author
This website and The Solano Rail Alternate Plan are the work of Doreen M. Traylor.
My father was a decorated war veteran. He served in World War II where he was awarded a Bronze Star with V for Valor designation. That means it was awarded for actions taken in combat. He also served in Vietnam and was awarded a Purple Heart.
I grew up near a big military base and military culture is my first culture. As a young adult, I was a military wife for two decades.
During that time, I wrapped up an Associate of Arts in Humanities from Barstow Community College and began adding classes to my transcript from a long list of colleges. I think it was up to nine colleges at one point, possibly before I got divorced and completed an unrelated technical certification for my insurance job at a Fortune 500 company.
I was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing through the cutting edge online degree program offered by CSU-Bakersfield, an early adopter of online degrees.
I also completed a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from UC-Riverside in an eight-week Summer School program. It's typically a year long program and I had my two kids with me for half of it, blowing the minds of my classmates, some of whom commented on it.
The UC-Riverside program is the world's foremost GIS program because many of the instructors in the program work full time at ESRI, the company that makes the world's foremost GIS software. The college has a distinct geographic advantage for GIS education.
For part of that time, I lived in Solano County, California and I was attending various planning related events and educational opportunities locally and using aspects of the Solano Rail plan as case studies in any college classes requiring a real world example for some assignment or other.
I wanted to become an urban planner, so I joined Cyburbia, the world's oldest online planning forum, to have online professional connections I didn't know how to establish in person and at some point I asked the forum owner to give me feedback on a class assignment. After reading it, he sort of awkwardly said something like "I don't know if/when I can set up a Citizen Planners sub forum for you to moderate."
I think he wanted this to happen and knew I wasn't really trying to create a sub forum. So I kind of accidentally started a sub forum on Cyburbia and moderated it for a time.
My recollection is that at least two professional planners that I knew through Cyburbia read my Solano Rail presentation and gave me feedback on it.
I have a long-standing association with the military and that shaped my understanding of what is wrong with the existing Solano County Rail Plan. To me, the issues with its impact on the base are obvious. I don't know why it's not obvious to other people and I don't know why they passed the extremely problematic plan that exists.
See also: Work.
7 August 2026
My father was a decorated war veteran. He served in World War II where he was awarded a Bronze Star with V for Valor designation. That means it was awarded for actions taken in combat. He also served in Vietnam and was awarded a Purple Heart.
I grew up near a big military base and military culture is my first culture. As a young adult, I was a military wife for two decades.
During that time, I wrapped up an Associate of Arts in Humanities from Barstow Community College and began adding classes to my transcript from a long list of colleges. I think it was up to nine colleges at one point, possibly before I got divorced and completed an unrelated technical certification for my insurance job at a Fortune 500 company.
I was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing through the cutting edge online degree program offered by CSU-Bakersfield, an early adopter of online degrees.
I also completed a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from UC-Riverside in an eight-week Summer School program. It's typically a year long program and I had my two kids with me for half of it, blowing the minds of my classmates, some of whom commented on it.
The UC-Riverside program is the world's foremost GIS program because many of the instructors in the program work full time at ESRI, the company that makes the world's foremost GIS software. The college has a distinct geographic advantage for GIS education.
For part of that time, I lived in Solano County, California and I was attending various planning related events and educational opportunities locally and using aspects of the Solano Rail plan as case studies in any college classes requiring a real world example for some assignment or other.
I wanted to become an urban planner, so I joined Cyburbia, the world's oldest online planning forum, to have online professional connections I didn't know how to establish in person and at some point I asked the forum owner to give me feedback on a class assignment. After reading it, he sort of awkwardly said something like "I don't know if/when I can set up a Citizen Planners sub forum for you to moderate."
I think he wanted this to happen and knew I wasn't really trying to create a sub forum. So I kind of accidentally started a sub forum on Cyburbia and moderated it for a time.
My recollection is that at least two professional planners that I knew through Cyburbia read my Solano Rail presentation and gave me feedback on it.
I have a long-standing association with the military and that shaped my understanding of what is wrong with the existing Solano County Rail Plan. To me, the issues with its impact on the base are obvious. I don't know why it's not obvious to other people and I don't know why they passed the extremely problematic plan that exists.
See also: Work.
7 August 2026