October 29, 2011 weekly rail news

Fun stuff:

• A photo from the Minneapolis Bike Love forum of installation of a new bike/ped bridge in Uptown over the Midtown Greenway, the former Milwaukee Road corridor through Minneapolis. (The building on the left is Mozaic.)
  
  
  
  
•  The Rick Mercer Report gives us the state of Canadian high-speed rail, which sounds pretty familiar (via @ttpolitic):
  
  
  
  

Construction, planning, and funding news:

• The Met Council has put out word that they're looking for businesses to provide engineering services for the Southwest LRT line.
  
  
• Walsh Construction reportedly has until November 30th to reopen four lanes of traffic on the 3-mile stretch of University Avenue between Emerald Street and Hamline Avenue in Saint Paul. Crews are working at a pretty furious pace at the moment, but if they need to have it all back to 4 lanes, they definitely aren't going to make it (traffic finally shifted to the south side under the Minnesota Commercial Railway bridge between Cleveland/Transfer and Prior a few days ago, and there's no way they can redo the north side in only about a week—however, there aren't any driveways along that stretch either.). They have also had to rip up some intersections in downtown Saint Paul where tracks had been improperly embedded in black concrete (I had been wondering why the intersections had been inconsistent).
  
  
• The Red Rock Corridor got a bit of coverage from the Star Tribune, mostly related to TOD planning in cities such as Newport.
  
  
• In the Northeast, Amtrak is going to suspend operation overnight from Saturday, November 5th to Sunday the 6th in order to replace two bridges along the NEC.
  
  
• The Surface Transportation Board has given their approval for the 190-mile DesertXpress line from Victorville, California to Las Vegas.
  
  
• The U.S. Army has acquired some Virginia Railway Express cars which they intend to use for a service to carry military students from Fort Lee to Fort A.P. hill on. The military believes the train is safer than transferring students on buses (they need to have more than a dozen to carry all of the participants). Trains will run about three times per month.
  
  
• Caterpillar/Progress Rail/EMD have rolled out the first new locomotive built at their Muncie, Indiana facility which they just started working on about 10 months ago (partly explained by the fact the building formerly built locomotives for ABB).  The first SD70ACe off the line was built for the Mexican railroad Ferromex.
  
  ...and, of course, any mention of Muncie is not complete without a clip from The Hudsucker Proxy:
  
  
  

New tracks, fresh pavement

New tracks, fresh pavement, a photo by Mulad on Flickr.

University Avenue as seen on Wednesday evening from the temporary bus stop at Cromwell (the east-side frontage road for MN-280).  The top layer of asphalt has been put down on the south side along with the final striping configuration.  I'm expecting that the north side will get its top layer soon, meaning that this segment of track is getting very close to done (at least at ground level -- installation of catenary infrastructure should begin in the spring if I understand correctly).

October 22, 2011 weekly rail news

Fun stuff:

• The Google Street View team put one of their trikes onto a flatbed car and scanned a Swiss railway. I'm hoping that they will do this on a lot more rail lines, but for now they seem to be most interested in capturing historic sites.
  
  
  
  

Planning, funding, and construction news:

• The U.S. DOT handed out $928.5 million in transit grants split among more than 300 projects. Minnesota got four. Two are state-of-good repair projects for bus operations facilities: $7 million went to Rochester, and another $340,000 went to Albert Lea. Metro Transit got the other two: $2.6 million for bus stop improvements in downtown Saint Paul, and $600,000 for an alternatives analysis for bus or rail service in the Lake Street/Midtown Greenway corridor in Minneapolis.
  
  
• Amtrak is apparently trying something new by leasing 100 miles of track from CSX in New York in order to upgrade it.
  
  
• Amtrak is proclaiming that their Amtrak Thruway bus network has expanded in Wisconsin, with new(?) routes connecting to Empire Builder stations in Portage and Columbus (often listed as the "Madison" stop, even though it's nearly 30 miles away). Lamers Connect is providing the service. The Columbus connection links to Madison, Beaver Dam, Waupun, Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Appleton and Green Bay, while the Portage connection links to Westfield, Stevens Point, Mosinee and Wausau.
  
  
• Just because I've got a coworker visiting over there who snapped a shot of it, I'll mention that the first segment of the Namma Metro opened on October 20th in Bangalore, India.
  
  

Other:

• Freight currently transported on flatbed trailers may soon move to special open containers which have vertical supports allowing them to be double-stacked. Canadian Pacific is trying them out.
  
  
• The current going price for the Grenada Railway line facing abandonment in Mississippi is $21 million (supposedly the scrap value of the line).
  
  
• Poking around on Google's LatLong blog after seeing their video on the Street View project, I saw that the company has published their spec for GTFS-realtime, which can provide trip updates, service alerts, and vehicle position data from transit providers.
  
  

October 15, 2011 weekly rail news

Fun stuff:


Planinng, construction, and funding:

• Metro Transit held three meetings discussing "rapid bus" services that may be implemented in several arterial corridors in the Twin Cities. I'll try to avoid calling it "BRT" in the future, since these are very unlikely to have exclusive lanes, though most other BRT features are being considered. Alex has a writeup of his perspective. Also check out the comments at the Minnescraper thread on the subject. One more meeting got added and will occur this week from 6–8 p.m. on October 18th at the Fridley Community Center.
• Officials broke ground on the $133 million Englewood flyover in Chicago on Monday, part of the CREATE program to alleviate train traffic congestion in the area.

Incidents:

• About 18 were injured when an Amtrak California San Joaquin train struck a stationary Coast Starlight head-on at Jack London Square station in Oakland, California on Wednesday as the Starlight was unloading passengers. The lead locomotives of each train were derailed, interrupting service for several hours.
• Iowa Interstate Railroad began operating again on rails through Tiskilwa, Illinois where there was a fiery train crash involving ethanol cars on Friday last week. The Illinois EPA has recommended that the state take action to make the railroad pay for cleanup and continued monitoring of the site.

Other:

• Amtrak got more specific about their ridership from this past fiscal year. They reached 30.2 million riders (up 5.1%) and pulled in $1.9 billion in ticket revenue (up 8.5%) across the whole system. The handful of routes that showed ridership losses were led by the hard-hit Empire Builder. Cancellations from flooding and other interruptions caused a slide of 12%, from 533,493 passengers last year to just 469,167 in FY2011. It's the first time in several years that the Builder has dipped below 500,000 riders. Most of the other routes showing losses had been impacted by weather (like the Vermonter) or major construction (like the Chicago–St. Louis Lincoln Service).

October 8, 2011 weekly rail news

Fun stuff:

• Here's Local Motives, a Macalester student film discussing the Central Corridor, Northern Lights Express, and the debate about whether trains to Chicago should go down the Mississippi River or through Rochester:
  
  Local Motives from James Christenson on Vimeo.
  
  
• Canadian Pacific has put up a website to show when and where their annual Holiday Train will show up. In Minnesota, travel dates appear to stretch from December 5th to December 15th.

Planning, construction, and funding news:

• According to a Patch.com article, the cost of the Twin Cities & Western freight rail reroute/relocation is being added to the cost of the (previously) $1.25 billion Southwest Corridor light-rail line. It's estimated at between $70 and $150 million at this point. I'm of the opinion that the tab for this should really go to Mn/DOT, who severed the (ex-Milwaukee Road) TC&W tracks in the 1990s to make way for the interchange at Hiawatha Ave and Lake Street and forced the railroad down its current Kenilworth route.
  
  
• The Federal Transit Administration is redirectiong $6 million originally intended for the Kenosha–Racine–Milwaukee (KRM) commuter train in Wisconsin, which is now canceled. Some in Milwaukee had hoped to get the money to help fund a planned streetcar line there.
  
  
• In New England, the Vermonter has resumed normal service after a summer of bustitution as tracks were upgraded.  In combination with upgrades now beginning between Springfield and New Haven, CT,
  
  
• EMD is planning a new streamlined 125-mph diesel passenger locomotive for the American market (and our screwy crash standards), though it will take until 2014 to see a prototype. EMD is now owned by Caterpillar, and the new locomotive is planned to have a Cat engine inside.
  
  

Incidents:

• BNSF Railway says that flooding-related repairs, particularly along the Missouri River, are going to cost them $375 million this year.
  
  
• On Tuesday, yet another mudslide blocked tracks near Tacoma, Washington and forced Amtrak to cancel Cascades service and presumably truncate Coast Starlight trains. Just last month, the state received $16 million for rail improvements including up to $10 million for mudslide mitigation. This week's outage was expected to last 48 hours.
  
  
• An Iowa Interstate Railroad train derailment and ensuing fire has forced evacuations in Tiskilwa, Illinois. Some of the train's tank cars were loaded with ethanol.
  
  
• A chunk of concrete fell and hit a Metra locomotive as it was parked on Track 5 at Union Station in Chicago on Thursday.
  
  
• I guess I missed it last week, but officials in Washington had begun backing off a bit with regard to the tampering that occurred along BNSF tracks which initially led to cancellations and later reduced speeds as trains were escorted through the area. Police now say that the tampering did not pose any threat to trains or passengers, with one official calling it "a nuisance type thing."
  

Other:

• The Twin Cities' Transportation Advisory Board is looking for three new members from three Met Council districts:
  
  
  • District A (Council Districts 1 and 2)
    Includes the Hennepin County cities of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Champlin, Corcoran, Dayton, Greenfield, Independence, Loretto, Maple Grove, Maple Plain, Medicine Lake, Medina, Osseo, Plymouth, Robbinsdale and Rogers, and the town of Hassan, and the Anoka County cities of Columbia Heights, Fridley, Hilltop, and Spring Lake Park.
    
    District B (Council Districts 3 and 4)
    Includes the Hennepin County cities of Chanhassen, Deephaven, Eden Prairie, Excelsior, Greenwood, Hopkins, Long Lake, Minnetonka, Minnetonka Beach, Minnetrista, Mound, Orono, St. Bonifacius, Shorewood, Spring Park, Tonka Bay, Wayzata, and Woodland, Carver County and Scott County, except for New Prague
    
    District C (Council Districts 5 and 6)
    includes the southwest portion of Minneapolis and the Hennepin County cities of Bloomington, Crystal, Edina, Golden Valley, New Hope, Richfield, St. Louis Park and the unorganized territory of Fort Snelling.
    
    
• Canadian Pacific is moving out of the Soo Line Building in downtown Minneapolis to One Financial Plaza right next door on the same block. The building was the tallest skyscraper in Minneapolis when it was built in 1914. The building, which is just an intersection away from the Hiawatha Line's Nicollet Mall station, is planned to be outfitted with 250 upscale rental units.
  
  
• In labor relations, a 30-day cooling-off period ended overnight on Thursday/Friday. A dozen railroad unions representing 92,000 workers have been negotiating with the National Carriers' Conference Committee representing the Class I railroads and many regional lines. The largest union -- the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen -- voted almost unanimously to go on strike, and apparently several others followed. However, as expected, President Obama set up a 5-member Presidential Emergency Board to recommend a settlement. The board will have 30 days to come up with a recommendation, and the unions will have another 30 days to accept or reject it. The United Transportation Union has accepted an earlier proposal to increase wages by 17% over the next 6 years and limit monthly health care premiums to $200.
  
  
• A dozen counties along the route of the (ex-Illinois Central) Grenada Railway line in Mississippi that is threatened with abandonment are looking into creating a regional rail authority to take over the line and keep it in operation. Shippers have complained of rate hikes designed to kick them off the rails, and a state-owned rail line to Kosciusko also objected to the abandonment plan. Grenada's parent company V&S Railway and it's affiliated companies have a history of buying out lines and scrapping them.
  

Railroad strike on hold for now

Just because my brief note about the railroad strike planned for tonight got a sizable number of hits, I'll mention that President Obama has created a Presidential Emergency Board which will help to mediate the dispute. The creation of this board should delay any potential strike action for at least 60 days.

Major railroad workers' strike planned for Oct. 7

Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen are planning to walk off the job just after midnight on the morning of October 7th. 97% of the union members voted in favor of strike action. Some details here.