Congressman Jerrold Nadler
(D-N.Y.), the senior Northeastern Democrat on the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Congressman Jose
Serrano and Councilman Michael Nelson for the City’s unveiling of the its new
comprehensive waterfront plan.
Saskatchewan shortline railways, which primarily
serve grain producers, will receive C$500,000 for this year’s infrastructure grants
to assist them with projects such as track maintenance, railway tie
replacements and bridge repairs.
Engineering firm Stantec is
designing a new signaling system for a portion of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit
(DART) system in Dallas, Texas. The new system is part of the construction of
the new Lake Highland station along the light rail’s Blue Line between downtown
Dallas and Garland.
MTA New York City Transit
officials said that real-time train arrival countdown clocks or message screens
are now operational and being tested at several stations along the 2 3 lines in
Brooklyn. Funded by the 2000 – 2004 MTA Capital Program, the PA/CIS system is
now in the process of being activated for customer use at stations along the
IRT or numbered lines (123456) system-wide. PA/CIS offers subway customers
audio and visual train arrival information. The expansion of the screens to
Brooklyn follows the successful rollout of similar message boards at eleven
stations in the Bronx along the Pelham 6 line.
Planning for a proposed
pedestrian railway underpass at Goshen College in Goshen, Ind., is back on
after it recently hit a slowdown, local media report.
When some of Amtrak’s
taller, double-decker trains pass underneath the 1917 railroad overpass on
Courthouse Road in Fredericksburg, Va., the clearance is extremely tight, the
Fredricksburg Free Lance-Star reports The distance between the train and the
bridge can be measured in inches, said Rob Shackelford, Virginia Department of
Transportation area construction engineer.
Due to scheduled bridge
maintenance that will be performed between Morton Grove and Golf, Ill., on April
17, Metra Milwaukee District North Line train #2627 passengers will be bused
from Morton Grove to Golf. Passengers will detrain at Morton Grove and board a
bus that will bring them to waiting equipment at the Golf Station. Train #2627
is scheduled to depart Chicago at 12:25 a.m. and arrive Morton Grove at 12:55
a.m. and Golf at 12:58 a.m.
Parsons Brinckerhoff is
expanding its operations in Canada and will co-locate with Balfour Beatty
Capital, which opened its Balfour Beatty Capital-Canada office in 2009 in
Toronto. Both companies are part of Balfour Beatty plc. Parsons Brinckerhoff,
founded in New York City in 1885, is the professional services division of
Balfour Beatty. Balfour Beatty Capital, headquartered in Pennsylvania, is a developer,
sponsor and operator of public infrastructure projects.
Gary Newgard and Mary
Schofield Nowee have been named senior supervising architects in the San
Francisco office of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a global infrastructure strategic
consulting, planning, engineering and program/construction management
organization.
The Sound Transit Board’s
Capital Committee reached consensus on a recommendation to the full Sound
Transit Board to modify the East Link preferred alternative alignment. East
Link is the 14-mile light rail extension between East King County and Seattle.
Stations are planned for Rainier Avenue in Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue and
Overlake in Redmond with service starting in 2020/2021.
A
bond issue, which must be approved by voters, isn’t the best way to keep a
railroad in business, according to an editorial in the Bangor Daily News. But
given that the railroad owners have threatened to abandon the northern Maine line and that
lawmakers are set to end their annual session, agreeing on a bond package that
includes funds for the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway is the best
readily available way to preserve the transportation link.
Teamsters Canada Rail
Conference – Maintenance of Way Employees Division (TCRC-MWED) and Canadian
Pacific reached a tentative three-year contract. The Memorandum of Settlement
will be sent to the union membership for ratification.
The city of Spokane Valley,
Wash., is using state grant money to protect a handful of drivers from their
own impatience, The Spokesman-Review reports. Too many drivers have been
weaving around railroad crossing arms after they’ve been lowered at Park Road
just south of Trent Avenue. The result is a dangerous situation for them and
for train crews.
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail
Transit (SMART) is an overwhelmingly popular rail initiative in Northern
California, according to an article in The American Surveyor. Measure Q had an
amazing 70-percent support of the two-county (Sonoma-Marin) SMART District.
It wasn’t a good day for
Caine Hlavaty, who was ticketed for trying to beat the crossing gates — and an
oncoming train — while riding his bike across the tracks in Elmhurst, the Chicago
Tribune reports. Now he was complaining he had missed his bus for work.
A wall
collapsed around 1 p.m. Saturday at the Lee Road Station on the Blue Line of
the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. The track was not damaged,
but pedestrians cannot board there. The station was shut down immediately, and
the Blue Line ceased operation. On Saturday and Sunday, RTA operated shuttle
buses on the Blue Line, from Shaker Square to the end of the line at the
Warrensville-Van Aken Station.
Work to reconstruct the
pavement and track at the Villa Terrace crossing in San Mateo will begin April
16. The crossing will be closed from 8:00 a.m. Friday, April 16, until 6:00
a.m. Tuesday, April 20.
The Section of
Environmental Analysis at the Surface Transportation Board issued a draft
environmental assessment on the proposed abandonment of 233 miles of rail line
in the northern Maine counties of Aroostook and Penobscot. The draft review
found that the abandonment of this line could divert onto Maine’s highways as
many as an additional 73,344 truck trips per year, consuming an additional 3.3
million gallons of fuel per year.
A
two-stage borate treatment has been used for years to help increase the life of
a crosstie. Stella-Jones recently developed a new single-stage treatment process
that allows for less handling of the crossties and reduced costs.
The formidable Cooper
Tunnel on the Norfolk Southern main line in Mercer County, W. Va., is now open
for larger loads, opening another key impediment to the railway’s ambitious
Heartland Corridor project, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reports.
