Railroad News

U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, lost a primary race last night to his progressive challenger, Marie Newman.

Newman, a business consultant and founder of an anti-bullying program, beat Lipinski by two percentage points, with 493 of 500 precincts reporting early today, The New York Times reported.

MTA Metro-North Railroad has been operating its Harlem and Hudson Lines in positive train control (PTC) since March 14, Metro-North officials announced yesterday. 

The coverage includes all trains along the Hudson Line’s 74 miles from Grand Central Terminal to Poughkeepsie and the Harlem Line’s 82 miles from Grand Central to Wassaic in New York,  including Amtrak and CSX trains.

The Federal Railroad Administration announced a grant award of $10.7 million from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program to fund Metrolink passenger-rail improvements in the Burbank-Anaheim rail corridor in Southern California. 

The grant will partially fund the improvement of tracks and signal controls between Metrolink’s Burbank Airport-South and Glendale stations on the Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines in Los Angeles County. 

The Federal Railroad Administration announced a grant award of $10.7 million from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program to fund Metrolink passenger-rail improvements in the Burbank-Anaheim rail corridor in Southern California. 

The grant will partially fund the improvement of tracks and signal controls between Metrolink’s Burbank Airport-South and Glendale stations on the Ventura County and Antelope Valley lines in Los Angeles County. 

As Congress works on coronavirus response legislation, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is requesting $12.9 billion for public transit agencies and passenger railroads to offset their direct costs and revenue losses related to the outbreak.

"Public transportation organizations are taking extraordinary efforts to protect the health and safety of riders and employees while working tirelessly to maintain essential services. We want to ensure that the federal government includes aid to public transportation agencies to help offset the additional costs and lost revenue related to COVID-19," APTA officials said yesterday in a legislative alert to member agencies.

Transdev North America promoted Dick Alexander to chief executive officer of Transdev’s United States operations. Alexander will succeed Yann Leriche, who is returning to France and leaving the organization in June. Alexander previously led the company’s business development team. In recent years, he oversaw Transdev’s autonomous vehicle implementations in North America, developed early pilots of microtransit services and piloted the integration of transportation network companies in paratransit contracts. Alexander is a member of the company’s North American Executive Committee.

Teleste Corp. will provide on-board passenger information and surveillance solutions for Alstom’s high-speed trains, which will be delivered to SNCF Mobilites in France. Teleste will provide passenger information management functions and a new passenger information control interface, as well as on-board video surveillance, audio and video recording, public address and LED displays.

Amtrak is offering limited onboard bicycle storage on three routes between Michigan and Chicago to accommodate requests, Great Lakes Echo reported yesterday. 

“We are receiving lots of requests from the cycling community, both the consumers and the advocacy community, and we’ve been wanting to be able to accommodate that,” Derrick James, Amtrak’s senior manager of state government affairs, told the news outlet.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) announced it will begin construction to expand the Metrolink train layover facility at the Riverside-Downtown Station in California in early April.

The expanded facility will allow seven trains to be housed at the station overnight, two more than the facility’s current capacity. 

Lower container volumes could further weigh on the intermodal business of North American railroads, as the transportation sector faces increasing pressure due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a new report by Moody's Investors Service.

Transportation companies, including freight railroads, would need to contend with lower demand as supply chains are disrupted and economic activity slows, according to the report, which was issued last week.

California passenger-rail agencies are continuing operations for essential travel after several California counties issued stay-at-home orders.

Under the order, residents in San Francisco, Marin, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties and the city of Berkeley have been ordered not to leave their homes for three weeks except to meet “essential needs.” Transportation agencies are categorized as an “essential business” under the order and will remain open, according to the order summary.

Sound Transit's completion of its Connect 2020 project — to connect new East Link light-rail tracks to the existing light-rail system in downtown Seattle — will be delayed due to electrical issues.

While completing final systems testing for the project last weekend, Sound Transit crews discovered insufficient electrical resistance readings over a segment of newly installed track, Sound Transit officials said in a press release.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Department recorded a 7 percent drop in overall crime for the first two months of 2020 compared with the first two months of 2019. 

BART officials said the decline in the overall crime rate was partly due to a decrease in reported thefts of cellphones. There were 43 snatch-and-run cellphone thefts systemwide in February, marking the lowest monthly total for snatch-and-run electronic item thefts since May 2018, they said in a press release.

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) last week released its proposed budget for fiscal-year 2021, which allocates $607.3 million for operations and $397 million for capital improvements. 

The budget includes $25.8 million for continued design work and initial manufacturing on the next generation of MAX light-rail vehicles, TriMet officials said in a press release. The agency's 2021 fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30, 2021.

Cenovus Energy Inc. announced last week it will temporarily halt its crude-by-rail program due to falling crude oil prices.

In addition, the Canadian oil and natural gas producer is reducing its 2020 capital spending by 32 percent and deferring final investment decisions on major growth projects, company officials said in a press release.

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) last week announced expanded eligibility of federal assistance available under the FTA’s Emergency Relief Program to help transit agencies respond to the coronavirus.

The announcement allows transit providers in states where the governor has declared an emergency related to COVID-19 to use federal formula funds for emergency-related operating and capital expenses, FTA officials said in a press release. The declaration also raises the cap on the federal government’s share of those expenses to 80 percent from 50 percent.