Railroad News

Wood pellet producer Enviva Partners LP today announced its contracts with the Panama City Port Authority, Bay Line Railroad LLC and SSA Gulf Inc. have been extended through 2023.

The commitment to the railroad, port and Northern Florida region supports operations at the company's Cottondale, Florida, facility, which can produce 720,000 metric tons of pellets per year, Enviva officials said in a press release.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation's Rail Division recently partnered with Progressive Rail Inc. (PGR) to spur freight business along the state-owned Piedmont and Northern rail line.

The 14-mile line between Gastonia and Mt. Holly is part of the 137 miles of track the division has worked to preserve. After a recent competitive bid process, the division selected PGR to operate the line.

Members of a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) rail operators' union have expressed support for a strike in an unofficial vote, local media reported earlier this week.

Roughly a third of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308's 3,000 members participated in the preliminary vote. Ninety-eight percent of those who voted favored a strike, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The Port of Long Beach in June handled 658,727 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), up 9.2 percent year over year and the second-most container volume for the month in the port’s 106-year history.

Imports grew 7 percent to 335,328 TEUs, exports declined 7.7 percent to 118,304 TEUs and empty container volume climbed 26.8 percent to 205,095 TEUs.
In the second quarter, the Southern California port's total volume rose 8.3 percent year over year to about 1.9 million TEUs, and in the year's first half, its volume increased 5.1 percent to about 3.5 million TEUs.

The U.S. House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee on Monday released a transportation, housing and urban development funding bill that would eliminate the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program.

Since 2009, Congress has dedicated nearly $4.6 billion for seven rounds of the TIGER program. In fiscal-year 2017, the program was funded at $500 million.

By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Associate Editor

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) has completed renovations to the Gresham City Hall MAX light-rail station.

The improvements include various safety and security upgrades, as well as improved lighting and new tactile warning strips on platform edges, TriMet officials said in a press release.

Watco Cos. LLC recently won an award from insurance carrier The American Equity Underwriters (AEU) for its safety efforts when handling marine cargo.

The short-line holding company received the stevedoring safety award at a ceremony held at a terminal in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Award criteria includes incident frequency and severity, and accident prevention controls that are in place.

Select Sands Corp. anticipates second-quarter frac and industrial sand volume at least doubled the 22,427 tons shipped in the first quarter. The company has reconfigured operational processes at its processing facility, which now can produce sand at an annual rate of 600,000 tons.

However, to ensure optimal inventory management, the company is producing at levels consistent with its ability to deliver product, primarily by rail, Select Sands officials said in a press release.

A group of rail suppliers and eight United Kingdom universities have partnered to secure $118 million to perform rail research in the U.K.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England will provide $36 million, while a group of 17 industry partners will pick up the remaining $82 million. The latter group includes Alstom, Siemens and Bombardier Transportation.

The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) rail system is on track to serve a record 80 million passengers in 2017, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) announced late last week.

For the first six months of 2017, PATH logged just over 40 million riders, marking a 3.6 percent increase over the same period last year. Through June's end, the system averaged 227,000 riders each day.

President Donald Trump yesterday announced his intent to nominate Ronald Batory to serve as administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Batory has more than 45 years of rail industry experience and most recently served as president and chief operating officer of Conrail. Batory joined the company in 1998 as vice president-operations and was appointed COO in 2004. He retired from Conrail on March 31.

— By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Editor

As we reported in our Daily News late last month, former airline industry exec Richard Anderson will be Amtrak’s next president and CEO. As of press time, Anderson — who most recently was executive chairman of Delta Air Lines after serving as its CEO from 2007 to 2016 — was to begin his new duties on July 12. Amtrak President and CEO Wick Moorman will be co-CEO with Anderson until Dec. 31. After that, Moorman will serve Amtrak in an advisory capacity.

BNSF Railway Co. has designated a transload facility operated by Sands Spring Railway Co. in Oklahoma a "premier status" location.

The designation means the short line provides superior performance, markets a comprehensive service offering and maintains a minimum capacity level at the Tulsa facility. BNSF bestows a limited number of premier status designations during the course of a year, said officials at OmniTRAX Inc. — which owns Sands Spring Railway— in a press release.

Caltrain logged 62,190 average weekday passengers during its yearly on-board ridership count in February and early April. The figure marked a 0.4 percent decrease over last year's on-board ridership count.

The news follows six years of consecutive ridership growth, Caltrain officials said in a press release.