Railroad News

Seventy-four percent of Americans in a recent survey agreed that Congress should boost public transit funding, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reported yesterday.

Conducted by the Mineta Transportation Institute on APTA's behalf, the survey also showed that 80 percent of respondents support using tax dollars for creating, expanding and improving public transportation in their communities.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) has introduced a draft of an infrastructure plan that would be funded in part by an increase fuel taxes.

The plan calls for significant federal investment in infrastructure projects and grant programs at least through 2021, as well as a plan to shore up the Highway Trust Fund (HTF).

Jean-Jacques Ruest has been appointed president and chief executive officer of CN, the Class I announced today.

Ruest, who has been serving as interim president and CEO since March, also has been appointed to CN's board.

Aubyn Bell, 32

Job description: Responsible for authoring environmental documents, leading environmental studies in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, preparing grant applications and managing projects. As a geographic information system specialist (GIS), performs spatial analysis, mapping, modeling and development of GIS websites for clients.

Education: Bachelor's degree in economics with a minor in mathematics, University of North Florida

MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) crews have begun relocating hundreds of feet of track in Sunnyside, Queens, by several yards to create space for an entrance to a newly built tunnel to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

Built underneath the Sunnyside Yard, the new tunnel will carry eastbound and westbound LIRR trains that connect with the railroad's Main Line at the Harold Interlocking.

The Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) logged a record 4.2 million 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) in fiscal-year 2018, an 8.45 percent year-over-year increase, port officials announced today.

The gain amounted to an additional 325,000 units in FY2018 over FY2017. The port authority capped the latest fiscal year, which ended June 30, with its 20th consecutive month of year-over-year volume growth, GPA officials said in a press release.

City officials broke ground last week on a three-year, $72.9 million grade separation project in Moorhead, Minnesota.

The long-awaited effort, which will include construction of an underpass, is the largest transportation project in the city's history, Moorhead officials said in a press release.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) late last week unveiled details of the first-ever plan to make its system 100 percent accessible to riders with disabilities over the next two decades.

The All Stations Accessibility Program (ASAP) Strategic Plan lays out the agency's proposal to modernize 42 rail stations that are currently inaccessible by wheelchair.

Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) has received approval from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to begin the next phase of testing on the long-delayed G Line commuter-rail route.

Testing began to ramp up late last week, with the goal of simulating full service for nearly 21 consecutive hours each day.

Metro Transit's rail ridership in the Minneapolis area is on track to set another record, agency officials said in a blog post late last week.

For the first half of this year, ridership on the Green and Blue light-rail lines and Northstar commuter-rail line is tracking above ridership during the same period in 2017. Last year, all three lines experienced record ridership.

A federal appeals court ruled last week that Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) should be allowed to set their own standards for measuring on-time performance of passenger-rail service.

The 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest in a legal dispute over whether Amtrak has a right to be involved in the rulemaking process for determining on-time performance.

GE Transportation received an order for five diesel-electric locomotives for Ferrocarril de Antofagasta, a private transport operator in Chile. The order, which includes a warranty agreement for parts and services, marks GE's first locomotive order in Chile, company officials said in a press release. Equipped with 12-cylinder engines to operate at high altitude, the new C23EMP single-cab AC/DC locomotives are designed for light-axle load operations. The units will be manufactured at GE's plant in Contagem, Brazil, and delivered in 2019.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation's (NCDOT) Rail Division has selected Dewberry to serve as a general rail-planning services consultant. The firm will provide demand modeling, rail function and preliminary design services, as well as studies of the economic and fiscal impact of rail-related activities. Other projects could include negotiation assistance in securing rail lines or corridors, train performance and rail-line capacity analyses and viability analyses, Dewberry officials said in a press release.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will host an infrastructure-focused cybersecurity summit July 31 at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City.

The summit will feature officials from the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, FBI and other federal agencies.

As of mid-June, U.S. Class Is employed 147,282 workers, up 0.19 percent from mid-May, but down 0.9 percent from mid-June 2017, according to Surface Transportation Board (STB) data.

Four of six employment categories reflected increases on a month-over-month basis. Categories that posted increases since mid-May were executives, officials and staff assistants, up 0.35 percent to 8,388 workers; professional and administrative, up 1.35 percent to 11,998; transportation (other than train and engine), up 0.18 percent to 5,594; and transportation (train and engine), up 0.31 percent to 61,787.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and local officials earlier this week unveiled a new rail car that will operate on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's (MBTA) Green Line light-rail route.

Long Ridge Energy Terminal has completed its rail loop construction project in Hannibal, Ohio, which makes the facility the first in the Appalachian Basin to offer unit-train and barge transloading capabilities.

CSX serves the terminal.

The Port of Portland is continuing its Terminal 6 service with BNSF Railway Co. through mid-2019, as part of a larger focus to increase options to shippers at Terminal 6, port officials announced this week.

The intermodal rail service, which began in January, moves containers by rail between Portland and the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Goods are loaded from rail on or off ocean carriers, with three carriers using the service in Washington, port officials said in a press release.

Only 24 percent of MTA New York City Transit's (NYCT) 472 subway stations are accessible to riders with disabilities, according to a recent report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

That figure is the lowest among U.S. metropolitan rail systems, Stringer's report stated.