Buses will replace train
service for Long Island Rail Road customers traveling between Long Beach and
Valley Stream the weekend of March 20-21 as work continues on the construction
of two new railroad bridges over Powell Creek and Hog Island Channel.
Persistence is paying off
in a big way for Levelland, Texas, suggests the dust flying above a 300-acre
tract on the south side of Highway 114 east of the city, the Lubbock Avalanche
Journal reports. Construction is in the early phases of the Levelland
Industrial Rail Park, which already has two companies signed on the dotted line
on a site that’s expected to attract $100 million in capital improvements and
1,000 new jobs to the Hockley County seat.
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.
Buses will replace train
service for Long Island Rail Road customers traveling between Long Beach and
Valley Stream, N.Y., the weekend of March 6-7 as work continues on the
construction of two new railroad bridges over Powell Creek and Hog Island
Channel. The shutdown of train service on this upcoming weekend was added to
the LIRR’s original construction schedule because recent snowstorms have
impeded work on previous weekends. The railroad’s goal is to complete the
installation of both bridges before Memorial Day.
For Faith Rawley, the
difference between life before and after the merger of the Canadian National
Railroad and the EJ&E railway is measured in vibrations, the Daily Herald
reports.
"Whether you like
rail or not, it is the future," said Thelma Drake, the new director of the
Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. "It’s all about
mobility and how you serve the maximum number of people," The Richmond Times
Dispatch reports.
The state suffered a
setback in the recent announcement of federal stimulus grants for high-speed
passenger-rail projects across the nation. Virginia sought $1.8 billion but got
just $75 million for its top rail initiative. But state and local officials
were undaunted in their efforts to improve rail service between Washington and
Richmond, and on into the rest of the state.
"Our job is to go
find the money we’re going to need," Drake said. And that money is in
Washington. She said that as a former member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from Norfolk, "a big part of my job is the Washington
component," convincing federal officials of the value of investing in the
state’s rail plans.
"The Richmond region
is perfectly situated in the middle of the federal government’s efforts to
connect Washington, D.C., to a true Southeast high-speed rail corridor,"
said Robert A. Crum Jr., executive director of the Richmond Regional Planning
District Commission. Or, as Drake put it, "we are key. You can’t get there
without going through us."
Building a high-speed
rail system is a matter of putting in place a large number of individually
small, if expensive, improvements that gradually add up to the ability to
regularly – and reliably – run a lot of passenger trains at speeds of 90 to 110
mph. The fastest that passenger trains run in Virginia is 79 mph.
As a result, said Kim
Scheeler, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Chamber, even a small
federal stimulus grant is valuable. "We’ve got $75 million more than we
had," Scheeler said. "We see it as Step One. . . . There are still
more opportunities" for federal funds."
In fact, "the
investments south of Richmond will improve the reliability of Amtrak’s Silver,
Carolinian and Palmetto services," said Daniel L. Plaugher, executive
director of Virginians for High Speed Rail and the Southeast High Speed Rail
Association. "And the improvements north of Richmond will improve on-time
performance and reduce trip time of all Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express
service using the corridor."
An additional $2.5
billion will be available from the federal government this year for high-speed
rail projects, Drake said: "We’re going to be applying for it." And
Congress also is considering providing $1 billion a year for five years for
rail work.
Railroads loom large in
the state’s transportation future as Virginia runs out of capacity on its
roads. The Northern Virginia metro area is the fifth most-congested region in
the nation, and Interstates 95, 64 and 81 have become the state’s intercity
Main Streets, with traffic jams to match.
From 1987 to 2007,
Virginia’s population increased by 30 percent, while the number of miles
traveled on the state’s roads grew by 50 percent, according to the state’s
long-range transportation plan. Highway mileage, however, grew by only 8
percent.
The age of go-go highway
construction is over. Keeping Virginia’s transportation systems running is
becoming more difficult as demands increase and financial resources shrink.
Since spring 2008, Virginia’s six-year transportation revenue has dwindled by
$4.6 billion, down to $22.5 billion for 2010-2015.
Meanwhile, more and
better passenger-rail service can relieve highway congestion while helping the
economy by encouraging tourism, supporting jobs and promoting local investment,
rail proponents say. Passengers cannot ride on a high-speed train in Virginia.
The closest is Amtrak’s Acela service for Washington, New York and Boston.
Virginia has two
passenger railroads, the Amtrak national rail passenger service and the
Virginia Railway Express commuter system. Last year, just more than 1 million
Virginia travelers took Amtrak, which operates more than 20 trains daily in the
state, including seven long-distance trains and the regional service to
Richmond and Newport News. More than 3.8 million passengers rode VRE from
either Fredericksburg or Manassas to Washington during 2009.
The Staples Mill Station
in Henrico County is Virginia’s busiest Amtrak stop, handling 256,006 travelers
last year, while the Main Street Station in downtown Richmond served 23,576.
In the past year,
Virginia invested in Amtrak service for the first time in its history. The
state’s three-year pilot program will pay to run two new trains: a
Lynchburg-to-Washington service and a Richmond-to-Washington train. Both trains
connect with the Northeast Corridor. The Lynchburg train represents the first
part of improvements aimed at expanding service to Roanoke and Bristol. Additionally,
the state has invested more than $197 million to upgrade the Interstate 95 rail
corridor.
Virginia also has finished
work on enhancing railroad tunnel clearances for the Heartland Corridor multi-state
freight-rail initiative, running along U.S. 460. The tunnel clearance project
will reduce rail-shipping time between Hampton Roads and the Midwest by a day
and a half.
Between 2010 and 2035,
Virginia’s population is expected to grow by about one-third, from roughly 8
million to 10.3 million-10.9 million, according to the state’s 2035
transportation plan. More than three-quarters of that growth will occur in the
state’s urban crescent from Northern Virginia through the Fredericksburg area
to Richmond and Hampton Roads – prime territory for rail and transit service,
which thrives where population densities are high.
Virginia has 54
public-transit systems – from very large to very small – across the state, and
construction has begun on two major transit initiatives in the most-congested
regions of Virginia: the Dulles Metrorail project in Northern Virginia and The
Tide light-rail system in Hampton Roads. Meanwhile, transit ridership – 192
million passenger trips a year in 2007 – could grow by as much as 4 percent a
year, climbing to as many as 586.6 million passenger trips in 2035. Balanced
against that, the state’s budget for rail and public transit has been averaging
about $450 million a year and will drop to about $350 million next year because
the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has taken over the Dulles
Metrorail project.
At the same time, the state
is faced with an increasing demand for transit and rail operating funds as new
services begin running. For instance, the state rail agency said, Virginia does
not yet have money nailed down to operate the new Lynchburg and Richmond Amtrak
trains after the pilot program ends in three years.
When the Department of
Transportation doled out $1.5 billion in infrastructure grants last week, one
of the largest checks went to a rail overhaul in the Chicago area, the New York
Times reports. Almost all of the country’s freight railroads converge there.
The region handles so much cargo that only three cities outrank it: Hong Kong,
Singapore and Shanghai.
Federal stimulus grants
could have redrawn the map of freight rail lines throughout the Rockford, Ill.,
area and truck routes around Rochelle, Ill., GateHouse News Service reports. Instead, after the $108-million requests were rejected last week, it’s
back to the drawing board.
A plan to build a new
railroad through George County, Miss., that will connect the Port of Pascagoula
with rail connections at Lucedale and Meridian has hit its first bump in the
road, but has not been derailed, the Hattiesburg American reports.
The Maine state
legislature is now involved in the effort to save 240 miles of railroad tracks
in Aroostook and Northern Penobscot Counties from being abandoned, according to
local media. Representative Ken Theriault has introduced a bill that would put
a $20 million bond issue to voters to buy the rail line owned by Montreal Maine
and Atlantic Railway.
If efforts to
re-establish passenger rail service in Hardin County, Ken., were a children’s
story, it would be titled, "The Little Engine that Couldn’t."
Regardless of
how tall that hill may be, though, two recent developments have given at least
some steam to the possibility, local newsppers report.
Competition for the $1.5
billion in TIGER grants awarded Wednesday was grrrrrreat. But the results weren’t so great
for Kansas, which got skunked, according to a column by Rob Roberts in the Kansas
City Business Journal.
A program to reduce train
congestion in the Chicago area is getting a major boost with $100 million in
federal stimulus money for 16 rail projects, officials said Feb. 16, the Chicago
Tribune reports. That’s good news for frustrated Metra and Amtrak passengers,
harried motorists and anxious shippers who are victims of affected by snarled
freight train traffic, officials said. And as part of the stimulus program’s
primary goal, the program is expected to create thousands of jobs.
The CREATE Program partners are pleased to announce
that the Chicago area’s Metra Board of Directors has approved the final design
contract for the 63rd and State Improvement Project (CREATE Project P1, Englewood
Flyover). TranSystems Corp. was awarded the $5.65-million contract. The flyover
will carry the north-south Metra Rock Island commuter rail line over the
east-west Norfolk Southern/Amtrak line (a federally designated High Speed Rail
Corridor), eliminating conflict between 68 Metra Rock Island trains and
approximately 60 freight and Amtrak trains that presently cross at grade each day.
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.
The new Hampton Roads
Transit chief will ask the Virginia Beach, Va., City Council for money to help
finish the ongoing study of light rail in the city, The Virginian-Pilot reports.
The City Council had been under the impression that the multi-million-dollar
study would be paid for with state and federal grants obtained by HRT.
Kansas has received a
grant to develop a business plan for an expanded Amtrak passenger rail service
south from Newton to Oklahoma City – but no money to actually develop the line,
The Hutchinson News reports. The $250,000 award from the $8 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail program also
must be locally matched, which is not a foregone conclusion with the fiscal
crisis facing the state, officials acknowledged.
The
Alaska Railroad invites the public to an open house February 19 in Seward to provide
an opportunity to review and comment on a proposed Program of Projects for 2010.
Open House displays are open to the public and will be set up in the inn’s
Mount Marathon meeting room. Displays will showcase continuing and proposed
capital improvement projects that are in various stages – from conceptual
planning to engineering and construction.
There will be no train
service along the Long Beach Branch Jan. 30-31 due to the installation of two
new MTA Long Island Rail Road bridges over Powell Creek and Hog Island Channel.
The $24.5 million project, funded through the MTA Capital Program and Federal
Transit Administration grants, will also require the shutdown of train service
on four other weekends later this year – March 20-21, March 27-28, May 1-2 and
May 15-16.
As a part of its Great
American Stations Project, Amtrak is hosting its fifth Civic Conversation in
San Antonio, Texas, to discuss the redevelopment and restoration of passenger
rail stations with a focus on communities along the routes of the Texas Eagle, Sunset
Limited and Heartland Flyer. The two-day workshop, January 27-28, includes
information on design and planning guidelines and a how-to session on getting
started on a station renewal project and the types of state and federal grants
available for station improvements.
