Fulfilling a commitment
to the Long Island City community to end back-riding and shuttle bus service in
as short a period as possible, MTA New York City Transit completed a series of
weekend rehabilitation projects, including major track replacement work on the
Davis Street Curve of the 7 Line. These jobs were completed three weekends
ahead of the projected schedule.
The Newburgh-Beacon Ferry
is resuming normal operations March 10, 2010. Ferry service was suspended
January 4 due to heavy icing in the Hudson River. Ice floes subsequently
damaged the floating dock in Newburgh, N.Y. All repairs have now been
completed.
A short-line railroad
operator that lost a bid last year to operate the restored Piedmont &
Northern Railroad in Gaston County, N.C., is back with another proposal, the
Gaston Gazette reports. Bill Gray, president of
Carolina Central Railway, could not come to terms with transportation officials
on a lease agreement last year. But Gray said he plans to bid again on the
state’s latest request to find a long-term operator for the P&N Railroad.
Some Ramsey, Minn.,
residents living near railroad tracks should be sleeping a little better, the
Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Two of the city’s five rail crossings have
been designated quiet zones where engineers no longer must sound train horns as
they approach. The zones, which went into effect late last month, will extend
more than a mile from Sunfish Lake Boulevard west along the BNSF tracks to
Ramsey Boulevard.
At least three parties
have expressed interest in purchasing the city of Keokuk’s swing-span railroad
bridge, which connects the southern Iowa town to Hamilton, Ill., the Burlington
Hawkeye reports. After years of searching for a company willing to buy the
bridge, city officials find the abrupt attention to the structure to be a
refreshing change of events.
Dean Del Mastro,
Member of Parliament for Peterborough and Chairman of the All Party Rail Caucus
Parliamentary Group, on behalf on Rob Merrifield, Minister of State (Transport),
and VIA’s Senior Director, Real Estate, Magdy Fahmy announced the construction
of a new station and rail line upgrading for Smiths Falls, Ont. Made possible
by the Government of Canada’s investments of close to C$21 million for major
rail infrastructure work, the projects will increase and improve the safety,
frequency and speed of passenger rail service all along VIA’s busy
Toronto-Ottawa route. MP Del Mastro and Senior Director Fahmy were joined at
the announcement by Smiths Falls Mayor Dennis Staples and Canadian Pacific Vice-President of Government Affairs Michael Murphy.
Since the Federal Transit
Administration’s approval of $900 million in "new starts" funds to
complete the financial package for construction of Phase 1 of the Dulles
Corridor Metrorail Project in northern Virginia in March 2009, construction has started all along
the 11-mile alignment from East Falls Church to Reston. More than 95 percent of the
construction of manholes and duct banks necessary for relocating the 21 utilities
in the Route 7 alignment area has been completed. Some overhead power lines
have been permanently removed and utility crews are now working in those
manholes underground to connect the new lines.
The federal agency in
charge of $8 billion in economic stimulus spending on high-speed-rail projects
doesn’t have the staff or expertise to properly oversee the money, government
investigators and congressional critics say. USA Today reports that the Federal
Railroad Administration, whose main job until now had been keeping freight and
passenger railroads safe, awarded the high-speed-rail grants in January —
months later than planned.
The Maryland Transit
Administration advises the public of an upcoming Amtrak project on the
Northeast Corridor between New Carrollton and Baltimore that will impact MARC
Train Penn line riders. This major track work project, replacing the crossties
on the northbound track, will require Penn Line schedule changes approximately
every 4-5 weeks for the next six months.
Allowing
the rail link between Aroostook County and the rest of the state to disappear
would be economically devastating to the region. But, with limited resources,
the state isn’t in a good position to operate a financially troubled rail line,
according to an editorial in the Bangor Daily News.
Kansas City Southern said
that it has acquired the Puerta Mexico intermodal facility at Toluca in the State
of Mexico. Later this month, Kansas City Southern de Mexico, S.A. de C.V.
(KCSM) will add direct train service from Lazaro Cardenas to Puerta Mexico,
providing Mexico City import and export shippers with a service alternative
featuring improved consistency and reliability and better transit times.
Union Pacific will improve
Seattle’s transportation infrastructure with a $5.7-million investment to enhance
its track from Seattle to Fife, Wash. Running generally parallel to Interstate
5, this section of Union Pacific track is critical to the movement of goods in
Washington and helps keep local and regional economies competitive. The project
is under way and will continue through the middle of 2010.
North Shore construction
work in Pittsburgh will cause much of the intersection of Allegheny Avenue and
Reedsdale Street to close through Friday, April 2, 2010. The closing is due to
the ongoing construction of the North Shore Connector light rail project.
February’s inclement weather resulted in an extension of construction in the
area.
A $133-million federal
stimulus project to build a railroad "flyover" at the Metra, Amtrak
and freight tracks in Englewood on Chicago’s south side will untie a knot in
the nation’s rail system and make way for high-speed rail, government and rail
officials said Friday, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
CSX Transportation has
agreed to take soil samples from under a bridge it owns in south central
Kentucky to test for any contamination from peeling paint flakes, local media
report. A group of concerned citizens in Barren County said their own tests of
the soil showed high levels of lead. The group’s leader, David Garvin, told The
Daily News in Bowling Green that CSX had previously been ignoring the concerns.
Vice President Joe Biden
and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced funding for 191 new
Recovery Act transit projects in 42 states and Puerto Rico that will help
transform the nation’s infrastructure and support thousands of jobs across the
country. In making the over $600 million in new awards, the Federal Transit
Administration met an aggressive deadline to award 100 percent of its Recovery
Act transit formula dollars by March 5.
U.S. Senator Susan
Collins of Maine, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, secured a
commitment from U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to work with her,
state, and local officials in an effort to keep the important Maine, Montreal
& Atlantic Railway operating in Northern Maine. Secretary LaHood pledged to
send the Federal Railroad Administrator to Maine to work on a plan to keep the
railway operating.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, the representative of Lower Manhattan and the senior Northeastern
member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said there will be $156 million in American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the Fulton Street Transit Center in
Manhattan. These federal funds, which Nadler supported, will be used for
construction and improvements of the new Downtown transit hub. Improvements
will focus on connections between stations, passageways, platforms, systems,
and restoration of the historic Corbin building.
U.S. Senators Charles E.
Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Congressman Jerry Nadler and Congresswoman
Carolyn Maloney said that the United States Department of Transportation will
allocate more than $274 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act for the Long Island Rail Road East Side Access Project and the Second
Avenue Subway Project. The East Side Access Project will create a rail link
from the Long Island Rail Road via the 63rd Street Tunnel to Grand Central Station
that will help tens of thousands of Nassau, Suffolk and Queens commuters save
hours on their daily commutes. The Second Avenue Subway Project will help to
ease congestion on the Lexington Avenue line, the most crowded subway line in
the nation.
A federal investigation has
identified pervasive flaws in rail safety at Metro and severe inadequacies in
the agency responsible for oversight. Findings released March 4 call for
widespread changes in how the nation’s second-busiest subway system is
supervised and managed, the Washington Post reports.
