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.
Drivers may have to pay
more at the pump so train riders can have an easier commute into New York City –
as well as improved highways and repaired bridges, the Newark, N.J., Star
Ledger reports. But they likely won’t have New Jersey to blame for raising
taxes on gasoline.
Greenville, N.C.,
officials will break ground on a railway connector track Nov. 30 that should
relieve the majority of traffic backups caused by the railroad switching
station, The Daily Reflector reports. Vehicles are held up as often as three times daily on
Arlington Boulevard, 14th and Evans streets while trains change direction in
that area.
Unlike a normal railroad
grade crossing, at which cars must stop to let trains go by, the one proposed
for the rail spur leading into the Calverton Enterprise Park would be just the
opposite, the Riverhead, N.Y., Times Review reports. A freight train using the
spur would come to a complete stop prior to crossing River Road, a conductor
would get off and check for any cars, and would then signal the train to cross
the street.
A special lawmaking session
on high-speed and commuter rail inched closer as legislative leaders and the
governor said they are ready to tap surplus money in the transportation budget
rather than raise taxes on rental cars to help pay for the transit projects,
the Miami Herald reports. The surplus money — about $76 million over the next
two years — should be enough to help fill a hole in South Florida’s Tri-Rail
system.
The chairman of the Sauk
County, Wis., Board called for closer coordination between parties involved in
railroad projects that could have economic impacts the area, the Baraboo News
Republic reports.
The new US 62/US 641
Tennessee River Bridge below Kentucky Dam should be opened to traffic Nov. 25,
the West Kentucky Star reports. US 62 and US 641, which run concurrently
through the area, have been closed at the site since September 9 and traffic
detoured via Interstate 24 as the new bridge approaches were completed and
connected to existing highways.
A special ribbon-cutting
ceremony was attended by SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey, Pennsylvania State
Representative Joshua D. Shapiro and local government and community leaders at
Crestmont (R2) Regional Rail station.
The New Mexico Rail
Runner slips into Santa Fe on new tracks with modern signals to guard
crossings. But the old tourist train travels to Lamy, N.M., on outdated
infrastructure, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican. That discrepancy was
highlighted recently when the Santa Fe Southern Railway tourist train collided
with a car crossing the spur line on Rabbit Road, just south of the city
limits.
BNSF has agreed to fund a
significant amount of the cost of closing eight railroad crossings in Galesburg,
Ill., to develop quiet zones, according to city engineer Wayne Carl, The
Register-Mail reports.
Work is now under way on
a construction project that will completely replace the 80-year old Vandeventer
Bridge is St. Louis. The bridge currently supports three rail tracks: two for
MetroLink, and a third for limited freight use. Constructed in 1929, the
bridge that spans Vandeventer Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the City of St.
Louis, is experiencing significant settling and deterioration. In addition, the
bridge is supported by four piers that are obstacles to vehicular traffic.
State and town officials
from Ashland and Framingham, Mass., met with the state’s new transportation
chief last night for a conversation about the state’s purchase of CSX
Transportation rail lines and what can be done to ensure that increased rail
traffic won’t further cripple their downtowns, MetroWest Daily News reports.
