A key component of CSX
Transportation’s northern tier strategy will come into play in early 2011 with
the opening of the Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal, The Journal of Commerce
reports. The $175-million intermodal hub near North Baltimore, Ohio, will
reduce transit times by at least a day as it routes containerized cargo from
West Coast ports around Chicago to the many distribution facilities located in
the Ohio Valley.
(The following editorial,
"It’s payback time for high-speed rail in San Jose," appeared in the
San Jose, Calif., Mercury News Sept. 20, 2010.) A bill is coming due for the
California High-Speed Rail Authority — separate from the $43 billion price tag
for the bullet trains that, if all goes as planned, will zoom between San Diego
and San Francisco. This bill is payable to San Jose.
The weekend of Sept.
18-19, MTA NYC Transit will begin a $47-million project to rehabilitate
Inwood’s historic Dyckman Street station and conduct stair and platform
improvement work on five No. 1 Line elevated stations from 207th to 242nd
Street in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
The NEW METRO’s Board of
Directors in Houston, Texas, named George Greanias, president & CEO of the
agency. Greanias, a former Houston City councilman and city controller, has
served as METRO’s acting president & CEO since May 2010.
The BART Board of Directors
voted 7-1 to reaffirm its decision to authorize General Manager Dorothy Dugger
to enter into a contract with the two firms the Board selected in December 2009
to design, operate and maintain the much anticipated Oakland, Calif., Airport
Connector. The vote is likely the final action the Board of Directors will need
to take before the agency breaks ground on the historic project, which promises
in the short-term to create thousands of jobs. While in the long run, provides
a world-class transit connection between the Oakland Airport and BART’s
Coliseum Station for millions of customers for decades to come.
Amtrak is working on its
railroad, spending tens of millions of dollars replacing thousands of the
concrete ties that hold up its tracks because the ties are failing, the Providence,
R.I., Journal reports.
Colo Railroad Builders was
awarded the contract to build a railroad track expansion project for South
Dakota Wheat Growers in Roscoe, S.D.
ENSCO, Inc., has received
a patent for its Video Inspection System for Rail Components from the United
States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent covers the company’s innovative
machine vision system and methods for inspection of rail components such as
turnouts, fastenings and joint bars using advanced fully automated machine vision
techniques.
Sound Transit on Sept. 21
will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its Sounder commuter rail service, which
has grown in ridership from 102,552 in its first year of operation to an
estimated 2.8 million by the end of this year.
Work on the EJ&E
railway bridge over Interstate 88 in northeastern Illinois, which starts Sept.
17, will result in a temporary shifting of lanes on the tollway, the Geneva,
Ill., Sun reports.
Air
quality watchdogs in Southern California can’t impose limits on emissions from
idling trains because they could interfere with interstate commerce that the
federal government regulates, a federal appeals court ruled Sept. 15, the Los Angeles Times reports.
(The following editorial
appeared in the Newark, N.J.,
Star-Ledger Sept. 16, 2010.) If
Gov. Chris Christie abandons the Hudson rail tunnel project, it will make his administration’s
$400-million blunder over Race to the Top seem like only a warm-up exercise.
The federal government has already agreed to devote $3 billion to the project,
the largest dedication of federal support for mass transit ever.
Chicago-area Regional
Transportation Authority officials predicted that there will be no major
expansion of the Chicago area’s transit system for many years and that fare
increases are likely as early as next year just to keep the existing system
operating, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The Illinois
Commerce Commission’s Railroad Safety Section has issued a Request for Grant
Proposals for local railroad safety education and enforcement programs. The ICC
recently received a grant from the Federal Railroad Administration to continue
working with local communities and railroads in Illinois to implement railroad
safety education or enforcement programs.
Sound Transit contractors in the Seattle area
will adjust light rail track switches on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South the
weekend of Sept. 1 8-19. Link trains will be delayed from 5 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
Saturday and Sunday because of the work.
In as little as seven
years, passenger service could return to the Florida East Coast Railway for the
first time since 1968. But it’s going to take a mountain of cash and political
will to make it happen, the Sun-Sentinel reports.
September 17-19,
Washington, D.C., Metro will upgrade its platforms and replace a track switch
on the Red, Yellow and Green lines to improve long-term reliability and
service. As a result of this crucial work, which is critical to maintain the
railroad in a state of good repair, riders can expect delays of up to 30
minutes.
In anticipation of a
hearing on federal rail policy, Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), Chairman
of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, released
a Committee staff report, The Current Financial State of the Class 1 Freight
Rail Industry, showing that the largest American freight railroad companies
have been earning record profit margins at the expense of their shipper
customers. The findings of the report suggest that the Staggers Rail Act of
1980, a 30-year-old law giving railroads the authority to charge many U.S.
businesses extraordinarily high shipping rates, needs to be reformed.
The new parking
garage at Tri-Rail’s Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport Station at
Dania Beach, Fla., is scheduled to open for use by Tri-Rail passengers on
September 21, 2010. The first covered garage on the corridor, the new facility
offers 402 parking spaces, considerably more than the 180 spaces that were
previously available at the station.
Axion International said
one of the largest railroads in North America has placed the first purchase
order under a letter of intent for the ongoing purchase of Recycled Structural
Composite (RSC) railroad ties.
