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.
Dozens of Washington Grove and Gaithersburg, Md., residents told officials from CSX Corporation that it should lower its railroad under the East Deer Park Bridge rather than raise the historic span to make room for double-decker trains, according to the Gaithersburg Gazette.
It was standing room only as residents gathered at the selectmen’s meeting in Westminster, Mass., to learn more about the plan to build a commuter railway station at Routes 2 and 31, locla newspapers report. The plan also includes building a layover station farther west at the Westminster business park, along which the rail line runs, that would hold up to six commuter trains. That part of the plan also includes a parking area for 286 vehicles, handicap parking and a waiting area.
The state of Mississippi is holding a hearing to outline CSX Transportation’s plans to cap deposits of creosote in the West Pascagoula River and Bayou Pierre near the site of a former creosote plant, the Biloxi Sun Herald reports. The company is proposing to do the environmental work and needs a state permit to proceed.
The Florida State Senate passed
a rail bill 27-10, local newspapers report. It now heads to Gov. Charlie Crist
for his signature. Crist has said he supports the bill. The bill clears away
obstacles for construction of SunRail, a $1.2-billion commuter rail project in
central Florida, and shores up South Florida’s Tri-Rail with an extra $15
million in annual funding. The bill could also help the state win a $2.5-billion
federal grant to link Tampa and Orlando with a high-speed rail line.
BNSF assumed switching and classification responsibilities
at the Dayton, Texas, Yard on Dec. 1.
Dayton Yard is about 40 miles east of Houston and functions
as part of the Houston Complex and consolidated terminal. Construction at the
yard started in 1996 with two tracks; the yard currently has 78
fully-operational tracks.
The additional switching and classification responsibilities
are a "big deal" for BNSF for a number of reasons.
"This really lets us establish a footprint in the
Houston area, more so than we have been able to in the past," said Marc
Stephens, BNSF’s general director, transportation. "In the longer-term,
this opens the door for possibilities of other business."
Dayton Yard’s role is to support the Gulf Coast chemical
network, to which BNSF gained access as a result of the Union Pacific/Southern
Pacific merger. Dayton currently operates manifest trains to Memphis, Tenn.;
Galesburg, Ill.; and New Orleans, where trains connect to eastern gateways.
BNSF now has 67 additional positions, a significant increase
from the yardmaster and 10 yard positions prior to Dec. 1. "We’re using
furloughed employees to fill the yard-related positions," Stephens said.
BNSF employment at Dayton now includes 12 lead jobs, three
utility positions, four industry assignments, one air test crew, six transfers,
seven relief assignments and extra board support, giving Dayton a total of
about 100 trainmen and engineers.
About 15 chemical company customers use BNSF in this area.
The yard also supports industry releases on Port Terminal Railroad; Bayport,
Texas; Beaumont, Texas; Bay City, Texas; Seadrift, Texas; and Lake Charles, La.
The yard operation breaks down into three components: classification
of intermediate connections, industry yard operations for the Dayton Branch and
storage for major chemical customers. The yard has capacity to store 3,000
carloads of plastics along with 1,000 cars in working inventory for the
classification and branch yards.
Construction to replace
the 80-year old Vandeventer Bridge in St Louis will result in the closure of
Vandeventer Avenue for approximately two months, beginning on December 7. Recognizing
that Vandeventer Avenue is a major thoroughfare for area commuters, Metro has
partnered with the City of St. Louis to plan a detour to keep traffic flowing
through that area while work to replace the bridge continues.
Enough people would board a
train in the Phoenix area’s suburbs that a future commuter-rail system would be
as popular as some of the busiest lines in the West, new studies have found, The
Arizona Republic reports. A trio of yearlong rail studies, in nearly final
form, indicates commuter rail could carry almost 18,000 passengers a day by
2030. Planners at the Maricopa Association of Governments say, based on the
findings, they favor a 105-mile, X-shaped system that could feature 33 stations
and cost roughly $1.5 billion. That’s a little more than the Valley’s 20-mile,
light-rail starter line. The commuter-rail network would use existing freight
track through downtown Phoenix, with lines from Queen Creek to Buckeye and from
Chandler to Wittmann. The northeast Valley, whose light-rail line lacks
funding, would remain without commuter rail.
(The editorial below appeared
in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
.) This much is sure: Light
rail will transform the city of Norfolk, Va. How, and to what extent, nobody
knows. But the ripped-up streets and chaotic traffic downtown will end, and
Norfolk will get back to the business of reinventing itself. This time, though,
the landscape will be fundamentally different, bisected and improved by a new
mass transit system. The experience of several U.S. cities offers some clue to
what the next few decades will hold in Hampton Roads.
By the end of next year,
the $288-million light rail line – more trolley than Amtrak – will connect the
eastern border of Norfolk with the western, linking Norfolk State University
with Harbor Park with City Hall with downtown businesses with the new library
with MacArthur Center with Eastern Virginia Medical School.
It will take time, but
those destinations will build significant gravity, attracting customers and new
businesses. Neighborhoods strung out along the Elizabeth River will become as
central to city life as anyplace. Stores will sprout around each station.
A few thousand cars will
be diverted off streets and highways by people taking the train. But until the
cost of commuting rises radically or traffic worsens massively, the primary
effect of The Tide will be on where people live and work.
Even as The Tide’s
opening gala starts to appear on municipal calendars, light rail’s opponents
still point to that impact as if it were some sort of secret, proof of depraved
intent on the part of city fathers. Changes to development and commuting
patterns were, of course, the goal all along.
"The way people use
downtown will change," Cathy Coleman, president of the Downtown Norfolk
Council, told The Virginian-Pilot’s Debbie Messina. "People will be in places
they’ve never been before.
Highways – which can cost
more to build, especially in an area like this – wouldn’t do that. And adding
capacity to highways is expensive, as every commuter in Hampton Roads knows all
too well. Once light rail’s tracks are laid, adding more capacity is both trivial
and cheap.
Think of light rail –
even a starter line like The Tide – as an amenity. Good schools, safe streets
and reasonable taxes will not individually attract many people or businesses.
But put them all together into a livable community, and over time, things will
change for the better.
It doesn’t have to stop
there, of course.
Add an extension to the
Navy’s facilities, to the Oceanfront or across the Elizabeth River, and the
transformation would reach well beyond Norfolk. Virginia Beach is looking for a
way to transform Virginia Beach Boulevard from a collection of outdated strip
malls into a place where people go because they want to. Chesapeake and
Portsmouth have taken painful note of Richmond’s failure to pay for roads and
see a commuting alternative.
Expect every step along the
way to be opposed by the same folks who rail against The Tide, who rail against
every penny spent on any amenity. Opposition to light rail isn’t a failure of
mass transit to make a difference in the lives of people who use it and live
nearby. Opposition is a failure of imagination, and Hampton Roads can dream
bigger than that.
The city of Lincoln,
Neb., is moving closer to closing J Street railroad crossings in the South Salt
Creek Neighborhood at Second and Third streets, the Lincoln Journal Star
reports. Closing the crossings would please Burlington Northern Santa Fe, with
which the city is negotiating to buy a railyard near the Haymarket for a new arena, if voters approve building one in the spring.
The nearly completed Minnesota Comprehensive Statewide
Freight and Passenger Rail Plan reports that more than $5 billion will be
needed to maintain the state’s freight rail system at an average level.
However, the report says the maintenance is not optional because the rail
system "supports economic development, enhances environmental sustainability,
helps to preserve the publicly-owned roadway infrastructure and increases the
business marketability of the state."
The plan looks at big and small railroad lines and evaluated
the condition of their track, trestles, signal system and more.
The report’s goals include all lines operating at speeds of
at least 25 mph, with rail and bridges capable of handling 286,000-pound cars,
which brings the total bill to $5.1 billion. If all lines were capable of
meeting freight needs and high-priority passenger service, the total raises to
$11.3 billion.
One large project is the 23-mile branch line connecting
Montgomery and New Prague to UP’s Mankato line, which has 13 bridges that are
not capable of handling the weight of modern rail cars and needs $10.4 million
in upgrades.
The UP line between Mankato and the Twin Cities needs an
estimated $450 million including a new $44 million bridge over the Mississippi
River at Mendota Heights and $163 million for a Shakopee bypass in improve
train speeds.
Also included in the report are upgrades that
are underway, such as the more than $77 million in upgrades on the DM&E to
bridges and track along a 98-mile section in the south-central part of the
state.
Freight traffic on U.S. railroads reached its highest level
so far this year during the week ended November 21, the Association of American
Railroads reports.
U.S. railroads reported originating 287,087 carloads for the
week, down 6.8 percent compared with the same week in 2008 and down .7 percent
from the same week in 2007. Volume was up 2.1 percent from the previous week
this year. In order to offer a complete picture of the progress in rail traffic,
AAR will now be reporting 2009 weekly rail traffic with year over comparisons
for both 2008 and 2007. Note that the comparison weeks from both 2007 and 2008
included the Thanksgiving Holiday.
In the West, carloads were down 8.8 percent compared with
the same week last year, and 4.8 percent compared with 2007. In the East,
carloads were down 3.8 percent compared with 2008, but up 6 percent compared
with the same week in 2007.
Intermodal traffic totaled 213,382 trailers and containers,
down 3.1 percent from a year ago but up 11.5 percent from 2007. Compared with
the same week in 2008, container volume rose 3.4 and trailer volume dropped
26.8 percent. Compared with the same week in 2007, container volume rose 19.4
percent and trailer volume dropped 16.6 percent. Intermodal traffic was up 2.6
percent from the previous week this year.
While 13 of the 19 carload freight commodity groups were
down compared with the same week last year, increases were seen in nonmetallic
minerals (26.5 percent), grain (8.1 percent), chemicals (8.1 percent), waste
and scrap metal (6.5 percent), grain mill products (6.4 percent) and food and
kindred products (.4 percent). Declines in commodity groups ranged from .3
percent for petroleum products to 22.1 percent for crushed stone, sand and
gravel.
Total volume on U.S. railroads for the week ending Nov. 21,
2009 was estimated at 32.1 billion ton-miles, down 6.1 percent compared with
the same week last year but up 4.9 percent from 2007.
For the first 46 weeks of 2009, U.S. railroads reported
cumulative volume of 12,325,563 carloads, down 17.3 percent from 2008 and 18
percent from 2007; 8,801,968 trailers or containers, down 15.6 percent from
2008 and 17.9 percent from 2007, and total volume of an estimated 1.32 trillion
ton-miles, down 16.4 percent from 2008 and 16.5 percent from 2007.
The Chesapeake, Va., City
Council is curious about light rail and whether it could connect to Chesapeake,
the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports. So on Nov. 24, the council voted 8-0 to
pursue a federally funded study on the possibility of extending light-rail
service to the city.
the
governing body of HRT, take necessary steps towards getting the study approved
and funded.
