The state of New Mexico and
Union Pacific Railroad agreed on a land swap that will enable Santa Teresa, N.N.,
to become a major commercial and industrial hub, officials said Nov. 10,
according to the El Paso, Texas, Times. Under the agreement, Union Pacific is
trading a large ranch property in exchange for land near the Santa Teresa
industrial park for its intermodal facility.
A plan is in the works to
eliminate some of the lengthy stoppages on Glenview Road caused by train
traffic at the downtown Glenview, Ill., train station, the Sun-Times reports. If
the General Assembly, Glenview and Metra make good on their funding pieces,
Amtrak officials have agreed to move the stops for the Hiawatha and Empire
Builder routes from the downtown Glenview Metra station to The Glen of North
Glenview station.
The Lake Zurich, Ill.,
Village Board gave its preliminary consensus for a property swap with Canadian
National Railway at the board’s meeting last week, which would result in CN
building a 250-foot-tall communication tower in the village’s industrial park
rather than near downtown, according to local newspapers.
South Los Angeles has won a
significant victory as transportation officials recommended this week that a
proposed transit corridor along Crenshaw Boulevard be a light-rail line rather
than a less expensive dedicated busway, the Times reports.
Washington, D.C., Metro
Board Chairman Jim Graham and Metro General Manager John Catoe issued the
following joint statement: "The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and
its Board of Directors are committed to working with all safety oversight
agencies that have jurisdiction over Metro and its operations. Regionally, that
oversight comes from the Tri-State Oversight Committee, which was created by
Congress and then implemented through an agreement among the District of
Columbia, State of Maryland and Commonwealth of Virginia.
MBTA officials laid out a
four-step plan Nov. 9 to address last week’s critical third-party review of the
system’s safety and finances, The Raynham Call reports. Transportation
officials also reiterated that the agency is not backing away from the proposed
expansion of transit service to the South Coast cities of Fall River and New
Bedford, Mass.
Los Angeles Metro Blue
Line passengers will experience travel delays of up to 40 minutes between
Washington Station and 7th/Metro Center from Nov. 20 after 9 p.m. until Nov. 22
at the close of service due to construction work to allow the installation of
rail track coming from the Expo Line and merging with the Metro Blue Line.
The ribbon is cut and work
is well under way on a project six years in the making.
Representatives from
the City of Hillsboro, Ill., Union Pacific, Oberkramer Contracting and
Hurst-Rosche Engineers joined Representative Betsy Hannig, Transportation
Secretary Gary Hannig and Senator Deanna Demuzio in cutting the ribbon on the
city’s new railroad spur, located near the old Eagle Zinc site.
As part of Chicago Transit Authority’s
work to replace the signal and train control systems in the Loop, the weekend
beginning November 14 crews will be installing a new signal control facility at
Lake and Wells that will require elevated trains to reroute on Saturday and
Sunday. Brown, Green, Pink and Orange line trains will be temporarily rerouted
from approximately 4 a.m. on Saturday, November 14 until 8 p.m. Sunday,
November 15. Brown and Orange line trains will operate on the Lake and Wabash
elevated tracks only. Green and Pink line trains will operate on the Wells and
Van Buren elevated tracks only.
A $10-billion unfunded
mandate regarding "positive train control" — wherein trains will
need to be outfitted with GPS technology that’ll detect when trains are near
each other — may hamper the railroad industry as a whole, but as far as
Canadian National’s plans for Northwest Indiana go, it’s full steam ahead, the Gary
Post-Tribune reports.
Caltrain is soliciting
public comment on the annual update of its Short-Range Transit Plan (Fiscal
Year 2009 & 2010 – Fiscal Year 2018). The plan includes the 10-year
operating and capital plan and financial projections used to qualify for state
and federal funds.
With a catchy new name and
wads of cash, the LSTAR has left the station, the San Antonio Express-News
reports. The Lone Star Rail District said that it’s moving closer to a goal of
connecting San Antonio to Austin and beyond with a commuter rail line.
Individuals who ride
public transportation can save on average $9,190 annually based on the November
9, 2009 national average gas price and the national unreserved monthly parking
rate. Over the last year, an individual riding public transportation would have
saved an additional $255 due to the 41-cent increase of gasoline per gallon
since November 2008.
The Whitefish River
clean-up work in Montana is on schedule, but Environmental Protection Agency
officials say it will take several years to finish the project, local media
report. The EPA ordered the railroad to clean about two miles of the Whitefish
River. The diesel and bunker oil fuel contamination appears to come from the BNSF
fueling facility.
Following construction
season track improvements, new West of Hudson schedules went into effect on
Sunday, November 8, 2009. On the Port Jervis Line: With the completion of work
on the interlocking at Harriman, travel times have been reduced by one minute
on westbound trips from Harriman to Port Jervis.
Koppers
Inc., a subsidiary of Koppers Holdings Inc., and Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Corporation have agreed to a seven-year extension of an existing
contract for railroad crossties and various other products and services. The
agreement extends the existing contract, which runs through December 31, 2010,
for an additional seven years through December 31, 2017. Revenues from BNSF
under this contract amounted to approximately $57 million in 2008.
At a ceremony in Oshawa,
Ontario, Colin Carrie, Member of Parliament for Oshawa; Oshawa Mayor John Gray,
and Mr. Pierre Santoni, VIA Rail’s National Sales Director, announced VIA’s
plans for a new station with improved and expanded facilities. VIA estimates
that it will invest as much as C$7 million for the new station and related
improvements from recent capital funding for VIA announced by the Government of
Canada. Of the project’s total cost, $3 million will come from the government’s
Economic Action Plan.
CSX Transportation has
placed RailComm’s DOC® Yard Automation System into production at
their Selkirk facility in New York. RailComm’s Domain Operations Controller server-based
control system provides wireless remote control from the yard tower to 48 GETS
HydraSwitchTM machine locations. The DOC® System features eNtrance
and eXit routing and stacked route planning capability, providing the tower
operator with complete control of all routes within the yard.
Plymouth, Wis., officials
say that the city is now recruiting at least three startup manufacturers
capable of creating hundreds of jobs thanks to a planned project to restore
freight rail service from Plymouth to Sheboygan Falls, the Sheboygan Press
reports. The companies, which city officials declined to name citing
confidentiality agreements, include one manufacturer that could employ up to
500 people and two others that could create 150 jobs combined – and officials
said more are expected to follow.
A nearly $850,000 million
public and private effort to connect mid-Atlantic ports to Midwest U.S.
population and manufacturing markets using double-stack trains has railroad
improvement projects scheduled for Trumbull and Mahoning counties, according to
the Warren, Ohio, Tribune Chronicle. What’s going to be done locally includes
bridge replacement and other projects necessary to provide the vertical
clearance to allow train cars hauling two shipping containers stacked on top of
one another.