Railroad News

U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao earlier this week shared details about the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT) forthcoming policy for automated vehicles.

The policy will emphasize a unified, intermodal approach to automated driving systems policy, USDOT officials said in a press release.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday issued four safety recommendations after investigating two railroad accidents.

The recommendations stem from the board's investigations of a railroad employee fatality involving Union Pacific Railroad in Kansas City, Kansas, and a BNSF Railway Co. crude-oil train derailment near Heimdal, North Dakota.

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HDR has obtained a contract with Sound Transit to provide planning, preliminary engineering, environmental and public involvement services for the Tacoma Dome Link light-rail extension. The 9.7-mile extension will include four new stations and a new operations and maintenance facility. The alignment will run through South Federal Way, Fife and East Tacoma, Washington. HDR's team will lead stakeholder engagement and invite the public and business owners to weigh in on the project, company officials said in a press release.

Signet Electronic Systems Inc. has achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification, an international standard for quality management systems. An accredited, third-party certification body performed an audit to determine that the company's quality management documentation is in compliance with the standard. The company is one of the few systems integrators in the United States to achieve the certification, Signet officials said in a press release. The certification is expected to open opportunities for the company in the transportation industry, said Signet Vice President of Transportation Solutions Greg Sparrow.

The Societe de transport de Montreal (STM) yesterday released its 2018 budget, which totals CA$1.4 billion.

The budget includes funds to boost subway service by more than 3 percent, which means trains will arrive at stations every 5 minutes on weekday evenings on all four subway lines.

The first week of 2018 was a tad slow for U.S. railroads, which posted 415,862 carloads and intermodal units, down 4.6 percent compared with the same week last year, according to Association of American Railroads (AAR) data.

Total carloads for the week ending Jan. 6 were 208,646 units, down 5.2 percent compared with the same week in 2017, while weekly intermodal volume was 207,216 containers and trailers, down 3.9 percent compared with a year ago.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) has unveiled four alternative routes for the Green Line light-rail extension.

Also known as the South Bay extension, the project involves extending the Green Line from its current terminus at a station in Redondo Beach, California, to a new transit center in Torrance, California.

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An environmental study exploring the viability of a high-speed passenger-rail service between Minnesota and Wisconsin has been halted after two Minnesota state lawmakers objected to its funding.

Brightline today announced that its privately funded passenger-rail service between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida, will begin Jan. 13.

Over the past month, the company has been operating simulated service to prepare for operational readiness. Brightline expects to become fully operational and extend service to downtown Miami in the coming months, company officials said in a press release.

Norfolk Southern Railway has assisted 75 customer facilities in locating or expanding operations along the Class I's rail lines in 2017.

The 54 new and 21 expanded facilities owned by NS customers represent an investment of $1.1 billion by those customers. The investment is expected to create nearly 2,000 new customer jobs in the railroad's service area and generate more than 147,000 carloads of new rail traffic, according to an NS press release.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has formed a partnership with FairMarkIT to help modernize the agency's procurement processes.

The firm will assist the MBTA as it moves from a combination of electronic and paper systems to a web-based operation, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) officials said in a blog post.

TNW Corp. has hired Joey Evans as the company's director of customer success.

The job involves directing all revenue car accounting operations, as well as planning and implementing strategies to generate additional revenue.

The Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad Co. Inc. (DL) last year logged a record 8,572 revenue carloads over the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority's regional-rail system, the authority reported yesterday.

The number surpasses the previous record of 8,048 cars handled in 2015 and is indicative of economic growth among the 20-plus industries served by the DL in northeastern Pennsylvania, said Larry Malski, authority president, in a press release.

A 40 percent increase in its anthracite coal business helped propel Reading & Northern Railroad (R&N) to its most successful year in history, company officials announced last week.

In 2017, the R&N handled 31,175 carloads and revenue of nearly 15 percent over 2016's levels.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker yesterday issued an executive order to establish a task force to study the feasibility of establishing commuter-rail service between Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.

The nine-member Commuter Rail Advisory Task Force will study initial and ongoing capital costs, expected operating costs, potential ridership, a recommended governance structure and the economic benefits of a rail service.