Railroad News

The St. Louis Regional Freightway yesterday announced a 2021 list of priority infrastructure projects aimed at addressing manufacturing and logistics industry needs in eastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois.

The list contains 21 projects representing a total investment of $2.2 billion. Half of that amount covers projects under construction or funded and expected to get underway, with some projects starting as early as this year, Freightway officials said in a press release.

Focused Technology Solutions (FTS) has partnered with LaTech Rail Technologies to distribute FTS’ SpikeEase battery-operated spike puller in Mexico. With this partnership, FTS enters into a new market sector, and LaTech Rail becomes the second international reseller to carry the SpikeEase, company officials said in a press release.

Teleste Corp. will supply onboard public address, passenger information display and closed-circuit television solutions for Alstom’s Coradia trains on the Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois railway in Luxembourg. Deliveries will begin later this year. The agreement covers system deployment for 34 trains and includes an option for an additional 20 trains.

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.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) announced plans to replace its GoMetro mobile application with the Transit trip planning app. 

The Transit app will provide LA Metro riders with real-time arrival information for trains and buses, navigation, trip planning features, personalized service alerts and offline functionality, LA Metro officials said in a press release.

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 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) yesterday announced that the Milpitas and Berryessa rail stations will open for BART service on June 13. 

The station openings are part of the $2.3 billion, 10-mile Berryessa extension in San Jose, California. VTA was responsible for station construction, communications, signal and track testing.

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.