Iowa Mold Tooling Co. Inc.,
an Oshkosh Corporation company, has expanded its manufacturing operations into
McIntire, Iowa, by opening a new facility to handle its increased welding
activities. The plant opening created about 40 welding jobs. IMT has also hired
more welders at its main facility in Garner, Iowa.
Construction of Norfolk’s
starter light-rail line is running as much as 41 percent over its original
budget, and that has angry local leaders demanding an explanation from Hampton
Roads Transit, which manages the project, The Virginian-Pilot reports. HRT
officials said this week they need $38 million to $40 million more to finish
the 7.4-mile transit system, which is just over 50 percent complete.
Fort Worth officials and
regional planners have long tried to get federal support behind solving the
infamous freight train delays at a railroad intersection south of downtown, the
Dallas Morning News reports. Mayor Mike Moncrief on Dec.21 seemingly made more
progress with one phone call than North Texas politicians have made in years of
lobbying federal lawmakers. Moncrief’s audience: Vice President Joe Biden.
With a goal of speeding
freight between East Coast ports and the Midwest, CSX Transportation has
undertaken what it calls the National Gateway project – an $842-million
public-private upgrade of rail infrastructure to accommodate double-stack
container cars, The State Journal in Huntington, W.Va., reports.
This city (Chicago) was
built on railroads that moved meat from its famous packing houses, steel from
its mills, corn from surrounding fields. Today Chicago is still the nation’s
leading rail hub, with about 37,500 rail cars passing through daily, the Washington
Post reports. But massive congestion on Chicago tracks costs millions of
dollars in shipping delays, and it causes substantial noise and air pollution
as trains idle for hours, waiting for track clearance. The problem threatens to
get worse since freight traffic is expected to double in the next 20 years.
(This editorial appeared on
the Boston Globe Website on December 21, 2009.) The Federal Railroad
Administration says it was just following the law in requiring a major environmental
review before Amtrak can seek money for improvements on its Boston-Washington
route. The review should be performed as quickly as possible, and, if it can’t
be completed in time to qualify for some of the $8 billion in high-speed rail
funds in the federal stimulus bill, Congress should change the rules. The
Northeast Corridor is, after all, a century-old railbed, and environmental
risks stemming from fairly simple improvements aren’t serious enough to
jeopardize the best chance in a generation to push American rail policy in the
right direction.
RailAmerica, Inc. says its
subsidiary RaiLink Canada Ltd. has closed on a transaction with the Canadian
Pacific Railway to terminate its lease of the Ottawa Valley Railway line. Under
the terms of the agreement, RailAmerica, Inc. received C$73 million in gross
proceeds. The company estimates net cash proceeds after taxes and transaction
related expenses of C$69 to C$70 million.
The city of Yakima,
Wash., expects to break ground on the railroad underpass project next March,
thanks to some surprisingly low bids from contractors and political support
from local members of Congress who hope to bring back more money from
Washington, D.C. the Yakima Herald-Republic reports.
Amtrak told local and state
officials that replacing the Niantic River bridge in Connecticut will take three
years and work on the much smaller Miamicock Bridge would begin Dec. 17, The
Day reports.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed
a transportation bill that will provide new funding to Tri-Rail, South
Florida’s cash-trapped commuter train, and boost billion-dollar rail projects
in the Central Florida region, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.
The Bourbon County, Kan.,
Commissioners are working hard to get signals installed at a dangerous railroad
crossing, The Fort Scott Tribune reports. Since earlier this summer, the
commission has been working on getting signals installed at the railroad
crossing on 225th Street, one-quarter of a mile south of Hammond.
The final waiting period
has begun for the Final Environmental Impact Statement paperwork required for
the Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal in Detroit, Crain’s Detroit Business
reports. The terminal project, between Wyoming and Livernois avenues south of
I-94, has a $445-million price tag in 2006 dollars (for the preferred
alternative) and is designed to consolidate train and trucking infrastructure.
The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail
Transit district in California has received $2.5 million in federal funds for
preliminary engineering and environmental work on its planned commuter rail
line, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports. The funds were in the Fiscal Year
2010 Omnibus bill, which the Senate passed on Dec. 13, according to
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
High-speed rail is a glamorous idea — it’s fun to imagine a train streaking through the cornfields from Chicago to St. Louis in four hours. Less glamorous are some of the fixes that need to be made to Chicago’s notoriously slow freight rail system. Talk about projects like "signalize interlocking" and "grade separation," and eyes glaze over, The Chicago Sun Times reports.
After a closed session personnel discussion amongst the Board of Directors, the Chairman of the Board of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority Keith Millhouse announced that Metrolink CEO David Solow would change his role at the agency effective December 15, 2009. The Board of Directors and Solow have agreed that he will step down as CEO and for the balance of this fiscal year, until June 30, 2010, he will remain with the agency devoting full time to the interagency collaborations necessary for Metrolink to implement safety enhancements, including Positive Train Control, and interoperability agreements.
Detroit may be one step closer to a light rail system after the U.S. House passed a provision in a bill Dec. 10 clearing a key funding hurdle for the city, the Detroit News reports. The provision means that $125 million private donors would pay for one part of the $430-million project could be counted toward the match the city has to come up with to get federal funding for a two-part rail system that would run along Woodward from downtown to Eight Mile, said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit.
"I am confident that we will be able to break ground on this project by summer," she said.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing called the action "an important development for the future of mass transit" in the city. "This legislation would allow once and for all a true public-private partnership to be formed for light rail on Woodward Avenue," he said.
The provision, which Kilpatrick secured in a $1.1-trillion omnibus spending bill, was passed by the U.S. House by a vote 221-202.
The plan for Detroit’s light rail system would consist of two separately funded sections; one financed by private sources that would run 3.4 miles from downtown Detroit to Grand Boulevard. The second would run from Grand Boulevard to Eight Mile, with 80 percent picked up by the federal government and the remaining 20 percent locally. The cost of the project is an estimated $430 million.
Although there have been no formal announcements about who the private investors might be, the most common names heard are Penske Corp. founder Roger Penske; Peter Karmanos Jr., founder of Compuware Corp; Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings and Little Caesars Pizza; and Quicken Loans/Rock Financial founder Dan Gilbert.
The railroad crossing on South Pitt Street located between 14th and Wyatt streets in Greenville, N.C., will permanently to facilitate the construction of the new rail connecting track, The Greenville Daily Reflector reports. This section of Pitt Street will no longer be a through street. Area residents and services will be able to use Beatty and Evans streets to access Howell and 14th streets.
Capital Metro, embroiled
in a contract and insurance dispute with rail contractor Veolia Transportation,
on Dec. 9 cancelled its five-year contract with the company to operate freight
and passenger rail, the Austin, Texas, American-Statesman reports.
The Finger Lakes Railway
may be able to help settle the issue of trucks hauling trash from the New York
metropolitan area through the Finger Lakes to the private Seneca Meadows
landfill in the town of Seneca Falls, N.Y., The Syracuse Post-Standard reports.
Railway President Mike Smith said his Geneva-based company has already been
talking with the landfill and Seneca County officials about building a rail
line to the landfill to deliver trash to Seneca Meadows. "It’s a good business
opportunity," Smith said.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called on Congress to pass the Obama Administration’s Public Transportation Safety Program Act of 2009, a new transit safety bill to ensure a high and standard level of safety across all rail transit systems. The measure would effectively eliminate the statutory prohibition against imposing such broad safety standards that has been in place since 1965.
