The Utah Transit Authority officially announced an opening date of Monday, December 10, 2012, for the new FrontRunner Provo to Salt Lake City line. The new 45-mile commuter rail line is an extension of the FrontRunner Salt Lake City to Weber County line that opened in April 2008.
New York City Transit’s FASTRACK is returning to the Seventh Avenue Line. Metropolitan Transportation Authority New York City Transit conducted four FASTRACK line shutdowns in the first quarter of this year resulting in an unprecedented amount of work. During the first late-night shutdown on the Broadway/Seventh Avenue 123 corridor, 800 maintenance workers completed more than 400 tasks each night, a monumental effort that would have taken months under normal operations. And, according to NYCT, there is still more work to be done.
Pacific and Arctic Railway & Navigation Company (PARN) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 959 reached a tentative Collective Bargaining Agreement on March 29, 2012, covering the combined crafts and classes of shop crafts and maintenance-of-way employees.
San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees all transportation in the city, including the Municipal Railway (Muni), joined U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the SFMTA Centennial Honorary Committee, to launch the 100th anniversary celebration of the Municipal Railway, founded on December 28, 1912.
This month the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver, Colo., is marking 10 years of light-rail service on the Central Platte Valley (CPV) C Line. Since RTD opened the 1.8-mile line April, 5, 2002, the line has carried more than 17 million passenger trips. Now a decade later, RTD and its community partners are marking the 10th Anniversary.
Following work set to begin April 16, Amtrak Wolverine Service and Blue Water passengers can expect normal travel times on Norfolk Southern tracks in Michigan by early May.
For the past several months, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has been working to complete both planned and emergency construction projects on the Norristown High Speed Line.
A new glass-and-steel Harrison Port Authority of New York and New Jersey rail station is now on track to replace the currently deteriorating 76-year-old facility after the authority commissioners authorized key steps to move the project forward.
Harsco Corporation received international orders for its railway track maintenance rail grinders totaling more than $20 million, including the company’s first rail equipment order from South Korea and its first larger-capacity 30-stone rail grinder sale into China’s urban metro transit market.
Iowa City will proceed with the Iowa City Industrial Campus Railroad Siding and Spur Improvement Project after the city council approved details of the project with a 6-0 vote.
In New York a major track renewal and component replacement project along the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Queens Boulevard Line will begin on April 7. The track closure will be in effect 24 hours a day as the tracks and support equipment are completely replaced with new ties, tie blocks, plates and rails.
California’s Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority issued a Full Notice to Proceed to Foothill Transit Constructors, A Kiewit Parsons Joint Venture for the $486 million Foothill Extension from Pasadena to Azusa light-rail alignment project. The Full Notice to Proceed affords the Kiewit Parsons Joint Venture the ability to implement all aspects of the design-build contract, including design and construction of the 11.5 miles of tracks, stations, crossings, bridges, utilities, maintenance facility and more. The total project budget is $735 million.
The Illinois Department of Transportation is committing $2.2 million to complete the engineering and design plans for replacing the BNSF viaduct over Illinois Route 29 in Chillicothe, Ill.
The project will replace the two existing viaducts with a single structure carrying three mainline tracks, a yard track, a service road and a pedestrian walkway.
U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) released the following statement after New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joe Lhota expressed his support for Amtrak’s Gateway Tunnel project under the Hudson River.
The first unit train pulled in to the Port Arthur, Texas, GT OmniPort on April 3. The arrival of this train indicates that the rail terminal is now open for business.
The second tunnel boring machine mining new light-rail tunnels in the Seattle, Wash.-area, between Capitol Hill and the University of Washington finished its underground journey Monday afternoon.
Brian Thompson joined Stantec as a senior railway engineer in Charlotte, N.C. Thompson has 21 years of experience in the design of mainline and industrial and rail yard tracks, transit design and environmental and civil engineering for the railroad industry.
Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad in Michigan has been using RailComm’s Domain Operations Controller train control system to dispatch their railroad since 2007. The DOC System at LS&I will soon be able to be accessed through web-enabled software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery.
Progress Rail Services Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc., has hired Tim Heilig as senior vice president of customer solutions. In this role, Heilig will work with Progress Rail Services and its subsidiary, Electro-Motive Diesel, to enhance the companies’ many products and services. Additionally, he will be involved in helping develop new products.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority revised its Business Plan to launch high-speed rail service, capable of traveling 220 miles-per-hour, from Merced to the San Fernando Valley, within 10 years.
