Metra plans to spend $100
million to install a high-tech system that would keep trains from colliding or
prevent a distracted engineer from speeding through a warning signal to slow
down or stop, the Chicago Tribune reports.
U.S. District Court Judge
John Kane on March 18 has denied a request by the Colorado Rail Passenger
Association to stop construction at Denver Union Station related to the
FasTracks regional rail-transit project, the Denver Business Journal reported. Construction
on the project has begun, with the contractor, Kiewit Construction, slated to
begin digging an underground bus station at Union Station this week.
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.
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.
The Port Authority Board of
Commissioners today awarded the largest contract to date for the World Trade
Center Transportation Hub, which will allow a critical portion of the major
transportation facility to be built that will eventually serve more than 200,000
commuters. The contract came in on budget.
Amtrak has asked seven
architectural and real estate firms to submit proposals to redevelop a key part
of Chicago’s Union Station and plans to select a winning proposal by the end of
May, the Chicago Tribune reports. The firms include the Chicago office of
architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Chicago developer U.S. Equities
Realty and the Chicago office of Jones Lang LaSalle, which currently manages
Union Station for Amtrak.
Jobs. Thousands of them.
That’s one of the main ways supporters pitched the two trains heading for
Orlando, Fla., the Sentinel reports.
For a dollar a year,
Lyndhurst, N.J., officials said the two dilapidated train stations in town will
soon be reverted to the town’s control. It could lead to refurbishment of the
stations and allow the leasing of space in them. Officials said the move would
augment mass transit ridership, give individuals with disabilities greater
access to the trains and bring more traffic to Lyndhurst’s business districts,
the Bergen Record reports.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates face a
roadblock on the route toward payoff on their investment in U.S. freight
transportation, Bloomberg reports. Chicago, whose railroads made it hog butcher
for the world a century ago, is a tangle of bottlenecks where a quarter of the
nation’s rail freight stalls while trying to navigate the city.
A tentative deal that
allows 38 Chicago Transit Authority maintenance workers to keep their jobs in
return for concessions is a sign that other unions may be ready to cut a deal
and get canceled buses back on the road, CTA chief Richard Rodriguez said,
according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The railroad maintenance workers were among
1,057 workers laid off Sunday as part of cutbacks that saw 18 percent of bus
services and nine percent of train services canceled.
BNSF employees in the
greater Seattle area have cleared at least five mudslides the week of Jan. 18
after El Niño showered heavy rains on the area, the railroad’s employee
newsletter reports. At one area, between Seattle and Everett, Wash., on the Scenic
Subdivision, crews were working to clear tracks after three separate mudslides
in the same area brought commuter traffic to a halt.
Continuing talks on
making the area more environmentally friendly focused Tuesday night on
expanding the use of trains, buses and bicycles countywide, according to the
Elgin Courier News, The Elgin, Ill., Community Network hosted a discussion at
Gail Borden Public Library that looked at the future of transportation in the
area. Among those attending were representatives from Metra, Kane County
Division of Transportation and Schaumburg-based engineering firm TranSystems,
the company contracted to draft the city’s Bikeway Master Plan.
U.S. Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Joseph
Szabo announced historic safety regulations requiring that Positive Train
Control technology be installed on the nation’s major rail lines, as well as
commuter and intercity passenger rail routes. PTC is an integrated set of
technologies that will help avert train-to-train collisions, derailments caused
by excessive speed, accidents caused by human error or misaligned switches and
harm to roadway workers.
A new street entrance to
the underground corridors serving Grand Central Terminal in New York City is
being built on the south side of 47th Street midway between Park Avenue and
Lexington Avenue. The new entrance will include a reversible escalator
connecting the street level to the 47th Street cross passageway as well as a
staircase from the street to the platform between Tracks 11 and 13 and from the
platform down into the cross passageway. Currently the east end of the 47th
Street cross passageway has no outlet.
After enduring the most
brutal year in the history of Bay Area public transit, train and bus operators
are barreling down a track toward bankruptcy, the San Jose, Calif., Mercury
News reports. The near-inevitable result will be costlier and longer commutes
for all, whether they ride or drive.
Mayor Richard M. Daley,
Chicago Transit Board Chairman Terry Peterson and Chicago Transit Authority
President Richard L. Rodriguez joined federal, state and city officials Jan. 9 at
the Fullerton rail station for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the
completion of 18 station renovations as part of the CTA’s $530-million Brown
Line Capacity Expansion Project.
The Metropolitan
Transportation Authority opened the new Long Island Rail Road Atlantic Terminal
in downtown Brooklyn, improving the experience of travel for thousands of
commuters each day in a majestic pavilion that features an artist/architect
collaboration in a soaring, light-filled atrium.
East Bay Congressman John
Garamendi (D.Calif.) toured BART to see how a new construction project, using
$13 million in federal stimulus money, is putting thousands of people to work
and will ultimately provide more seating, more trains and improved on-time
performance for BART commuters riding between Pleasant Hill, Oakland and San
Francisco.
Senator Robert Menendez
and Congressman Frank Pallone joined NJTRANSIT Executive Director Richard
Sarles and other officials at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new 477-space
parking lot that more than doubles parking capacity at Edison Station on the
Northeast Corridor rail line. The lot opens to customers January 1.
After nearly six years of
construction, the new entrance to the Long Island Rail Road’s critical Atlantic
Terminal at Flatbush Avenue is finally open to straphangers, according to The
Brooklyn Paper. Commuters looking for the LIRR ticket office will find that it
has moved to a new location on the concourse below the ground floor entrance,
where natural light shines through glass that spans from the road to the
ceiling, offering views of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower across the
street.
