Railroad News

Alaska Railroad Corp. yesterday announced it has restored freight and passenger service north of Anchorage following several days of suspension due to a retaining wall failure and forest fires.

Regularly scheduled overnight freight service between Anchorage and Fairbanks resumed Aug. 20, and passenger service resumed Aug. 21, railroad officials said in a press release.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec’s Minister of Transport Francois Bonnardel earlier this week announced that CA$3.3 billion in total government funding will be contributed to establish a public transit network in Quebec City. 

The planned network would extend over 34 miles and include a 14-mile tram line, two new bus lines and improvements to the current bus system, according to a press release issued by Trudeau's office. 

After a 32-year career at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), General Manager Jeffrey Knueppel will leave the agency on Dec. 31.

Knueppel is choosing not to renew his contract, which expires at year's end, so that he can retire and spend more time with his family, SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said this morning.

Audra Rodgers, 39
Rail structure lead, U.S.
AECOM

Nominator’s quote: “Being a project manager is a demanding job, especially when you are in the first 10 to 15 years of your career. However, Audra makes it look effortless, with an ability to combine her engineering knowledge with client management, team engagement and financial accountability. Audra makes other engineers want to do their best work while empowering her team members with confidence. These traits in a project manager are impossible to teach, which makes them so much more valuable when found.” — Alanna Strohecker, AECOM, 2015 Rising Star

MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and 3rd Track Constructors crews later this week will begin installation of a new rail bridge and underpass tunnel to eliminate a grade crossing at Covert Avenue in Long Island, New York.

The crossing will be reconstructed to provide a two-lane grade-separated underpass with a pedestrian sidewalk, LIRR officials said in a press release.

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Ideally, when people see a problem, they do something about it before things get out of hand. But we don’t live in a perfect world, or work in a perfect industry, and sometimes it takes a crisis to shock people into acting.

It still may be summer, but it's not too early for Kansas City Southern to roll out the 2019 schedule for its 19th annual Holiday Express train.

The six-car festive train will depart Nov. 27 from Shreveport, Louisiana, on this year's tour, which will stop in 20 communities in five U.S. states on 25 dates. The route will end Dec. 22 at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri.

G3 last week marked the opening of its new high-efficiency grain elevator on a CN line in Maidstone, Saskatchewan.

Similar to the company's other modern grain elevators across western Canada, the new facility features fast truck-unloads and a railway loop track that can load a 150-car train, G3 officials said in a press release.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) yesterday announced that India Birdsong will become the authority’s next chief executive officer and general manager, effective Sept. 16.

GCRTA’s board yesterday unanimously approved Birdsong’s contract, which has been under negotiation since early July after a 10-month nationwide candidate search. 

On the 50th anniversary of a deadly train collision in Connecticut, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other government officials yesterday called on railroads to finish the job of implementing positive train control (PTC) to prevent similar collisions and other fatal rail incidents.

The NTSB issued its first PTC recommendation as a result of its investigation into the August 1969 accident, which killed four people and injured 43 others. The accident occurred when two Penn Central commuter trains collided just north of the Hoyt Street crossing on the New Canaan branch near Darien, Connecticut.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this week signed an executive order to require New Jersey Transit to share its rail performance metrics with the public on a monthly basis. 

Beginning in November, NJ Transit is required to release a progress report of its performance metrics starting with data from October. The reports will also include historical information dating to 2017, according to a press release issued by Murphy’s office. 

Katie Sanders, 39
Assistant Vice President of IT operations and systems development
Union Pacific Railroad

Nominator’s quote: “Katie balances tactical support protocols with forward thinking innovation. She participates on industry committees for PTC that establish interoperability maintenance procedures and tools amongst roads.” — Beth Whited, Union Pacific Railroad

TransLink yesterday announced that beginning Sept. 3 it will add six new trains to its SkyTrain network in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The addition of 24 new cars in service will increase passenger capacity by 9 percent on the Millennium Line and by 5 percent on the Expo Line during peak times, TransLink officials said in a press release. 

The New Orleans Regional Planning Commission (RPC), in partnership with the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA), this week will host its final three open houses to gather public input on New Links, a proposed redesign plan for public transportation in greater New Orleans. 

The study's goal is to develop recommendations for a network redesign that aims to improve the public transit across the Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard parishes, according to the project webpage. 

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has partnered with the Walsh-Fluor Design-Build Team joint venture to host career fairs in pursuit of a diverse workforce for CTA’s largest capital improvement project, the Red and Purple Modernization (RPM).

The career and networking fairs are designed to deliver training and job opportunity information to  disadvantaged workers and communities throughout Chicago, and lead to a more diversified workforce on the RPM and other CTA construction projects, authority officials said in a press release. 

Steven Bradbury, general counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) since November 2017, is being tapped to serve as the department's acting deputy secretary, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) reported.

Bradbury's new duties as acting deputy are in addition to his current duties as general counsel, according to the AASHTO Journal.

A Pennsylvania state subcommittee on railroads will hold a hearing later this month on whether a second daily service should be added to Amtrak's Pennsylvanian train schedule.

At the Aug. 28 hearing, experts are expected to discuss the potential for freight and passenger-rail service in western Pennsylvania, particularly in Blair County.