Railroad News

The Delaware Department of Transportation’s (DelDOT) Delaware Transit Corp. (DTC) earlier this week opened a multimodal transit center next to the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station in Wilmington, Delaware.

The $10 million center serves as a hub for multimodal travel into Wilmington and New Castle County, providing access to Amtrak and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority passenger-rail service, bus service, rental vehicles and bike shares, DTC officials said in a press release.

Broward County, Florida, officials yesterday announced Jonathan Daniels will become the new chief executive and port director at Port Everglades.

Daniels comes to Port Everglades from the Port of Gulfport, Mississippi, where as executive director since 2013 he led a $570 million restoration and expansion project. Prior to that, he was executive director of Port of Oswego in New York, managing director of the Port of Greater Baton Rouge and port director for the Eastport Port Authority in Maine.

Siemens Mobility yesterday announced the appointment of Yves Desjardins-Siciliano as Canadian chief executive officer for Siemens Mobility Ltd. 

Desjardins-Siciliano is the former president and CEO of VIA Rail Canada Inc., where he was responsible for managing over 3,300 employees moving nearly 5 million passengers per year. He also served as VIA Rail’s chief corporate and legal officer.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) this week rolled out a national plan that calls for spending $205 billion to build a national high-speed rail network.

Construction of a high-speed rail network would help get the economy back on track, create competition in transportation and give U.S. residents cleaner, faster and more reliable commutes, Moulton said in a press release.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) yesterday announced it has been allocated $229 million from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. 

The grant will be used to help address the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on DART’s system.

U.S. railroads logged 184,415 carloads in the week ending May 16, marking a 30.2 percent drop and the biggest decline in year-over-year weekly carload traffic since the Association of American Railroads (AAR) began tracking the data in 1988.

For the week, U.S. railroads moved 416,115 carload and intermodal units, down 22 percent compared with the same week a year ago. Weekly intermodal volume was 231,700 containers and trailers, down 14 percent, according to AAR data.

Port of Virginia Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director John Reinhart announced yesterday he will retire from his post in March 2021.

Reinhart has served in the position since February 2014. He is the fourth person to lead the agency, which owns and operates container and multi-use commercial marine terminals on behalf of the state.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City earlier this week expanded its antibody testing program for all MTA employees. 

Employees that are asymptotic, or not currently exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, but may have been exposed to the diseases are eligible for the antibody testing, MTA officials said in a press release.

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) yesterday announced grant awards to five transit-rail agencies as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to address the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The agencies and their grant allocations are:

Class Is employed 124,430 employees as of mid-April, down 2.69 percent from March and down 13.72 percent from April 2019 levels, according to Surface Transportation Board data.

Four employment categories logged month-to-month decreases. They were transportation (train and engine), down 6.07 percent to 48,658 employees; maintenance of equipment and stores, down 1.6 percent to 21,709; transportation (other than train and engine), down 1.3 percent to 5,237; and professional and administrative, down 1.01 percent to 10,638.

The Robel Group formed the Robel Railway Engineering Technology Co. Ltd. (RRET) to provide full sales and service coverage for the Robel product portfolio in Shanghai, China. William Lin was appointed RRET’s general manager.

Siemens Mobility partnered with Ondas Networks to bring a portfolio of wireless radio communication systems to the North American rail market. The portfolio will feature new radios that are interoperable with Siemens Mobility’s advanced train control system radios. Using the MC-IoT radio architecture from Ondas, the new radios will be able to utilize a railroad’s existing wireless infrastructure and dedicated radio frequencies, as well as the flexibility to adapt to future availability changes in the radio frequency spectrum, Siemens officials said in a press release.

Sound Transit will resume fare collection on its Link light-rail and Sounder commuter-rail systems on June 1. 

The Seattle-based agency suspended fare collection on March 21 to encourage social distancing between riders and rail operators to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The final group of automated stacking cranes that are at the center of the Port of Virginia's capacity expansion project arrived last week at Norfolk International Terminals (NIT), port officials announced yesterday.

Over the past two years, 86 of the cranes have been delivered to the port. Twenty-six new cranes are in place at Virginia International Gateway and 60 at NIT. The $217 million contract with Finland-based Konecranes is the largest one-time order for automated stacking cranes in industry history, port officials said in a press release.

The Regional Transportation District of Denver’s (RTD) board has begun a nationwide search for a permanent general manager and chief executive officer. 

The board is looking for applicants who are passionate, forward-thinking leaders with strong interpersonal and communication skills, as well as the ability to manage a complex environment collaboratively, RTD officials said in a press release.

President Donald Trump yesterday nominated Sarah Feinberg, interim president of MTA New York City Transit (NYCT), and Chris Koos, mayor of Normal, Illinois, to serve on Amtrak's board.

Feinberg has filled the role of NYCT's interim president since February, following the resignation of Andy Byford. She's also a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board. Feinberg served as administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration from 2015 to 2017 during President Barack Obama's second term.

New Jersey Transit has been allocated $1.4 billion in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding, agency officials announced late last week.

The grant can be used for operating expenses incurred from efforts to prevent, prepare for and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic dating back to January 20.