WASHINGTON – Chicago’s Metra will receive a $513.6 million from the American Rescue Plan fund, announced U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The funds will help the commuter agency maintain service and keep workers on the payroll as it continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Public transportation has helped people reach their jobs at hospitals, grocery stores, ports, and more throughout this pandemic,” said Buttigieg in a U.S. DOT news release. “This funding from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan will help keep Metra service running, protect transit employees from layoffs, and ensure people can get where they need to go.”
“While intercity transit ridership was hit hard by the pandemic, commuter rail also felt a tremendous impact,” said FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez. “Helping keep Metra and other commuter railroads on track, while ridership recovers, is of critical importance to the communities that are connected by the rails that Metra travels.”
This funding is part of more than $30 billion for public transportation in the American Rescue Plan Act signed into law by President Biden last March. The funding comes from the $26.6 billion allocated by statutory formulas to urban and rural areas, Tribal governments, and for the enhanced mobility of seniors and individuals with disabilities.
I hope there is funding in the American Rescue Plan for CREATE. With all the talk about improving the supply chain and rail car velocity, completing CREATE projects quicker should be a high priority.
January 31- the date the train, 48 in this case originated.
Charles, you are a celebrity here at the Newswire comment line! And I have two other items that will make you sick: Go on Trainorders.com Passenger Trains forum and see today’s threads on the Venture coaches and the one citing #48-31with a CTrail P40 behind the Amtrak power. The Venture coach seats do not recline and do not line up with the windows. Some rows have no window. #48-31 was sent east WITHOUT the cafe! Doesn’t that
mean the coach pax cannot get food enroute?!?! The 14th Street maintenance base that services the Midwest Chicago hub that FRA administrator Amit Bose gushed about in a presentation in the CUS Great Hall couldn’t scrounge up a replacement!?!? And no food service altogether ALB-BOS?!?! And recent sightings by friends at Pittsfield and East Chatham, NY have the trains with no sleeper. And this and all the other outrageous stuff at Trainorders and the Newswire goes unremarked in the administration of “Amtrak Joe”. Because in truth he’s really “Northeast Corridor Joe”.
Thanks Mark. What is the 31 after 48 for? I think you are referring to the Late Shore Ltd but I thought that was 48-448
MARK – Since you are a transplanted Mass Hole (albeit living in the Siberian hinterland of the Bay State) you may be interested in an on-line discussion I had with members of my high school graduating class in SE Mass. Two topics, the NEC Canton Viaduct and street railways in the Canton – Walpole – Foxborough area. The Canton Viaduct must be the oldest major structure anywhere on NEC and I wonder if anywhere on any mainline railroad in America. If you’ve never seen it it’s an amazing structure. It’s located between the Canton Junction and Sharon local MBTA stations on the Boston – Provience NEC main, just to the Canton side of the town line. I don’t know the exact construction date in the 1800’s but it survives into the electrification era and Acela speed trains, with I believe a bit of speed restriction. The highest speeds on the New Haven Railroad portion of NEC are to the south in Sharon to Mansfield (including an isolated corner of the town of Foxborough), and in the southern portion of Rhode Island. (BTW Canton is pronounced “Caa-in”)
Now, street railways. I thought they existed only in the more urban inner suburbs like say Newton or Quincy. I think my dad might have told me he took a trolley from Boston to work at the Fore River Shipyard in South Quincy during the war … and if that’s what he said that would be the one and only such reference to suburban street railways I ever heard growing up. But it turns out the unbeknownst to me growing up in southern Norfolk County (which in the interurban age were small towns – the suburban populations like me came after the war), there were street railways all through the Sharon – Walpole – Foxborough area. Total news to me.
Ed Lecouyer who occasioanlly posts on these pages is from even further out – the Wrentham – Norfolk area, I don’t know exactly where. He might have some more knowledge.
Great news!!
Charles? Are you there Charles? I am concerned I haven’t heard from Mr. Landey on this yet. I hope he is OK. (All in jest… 😉 )
I was out shopping. Just came in. The absolutely useless lockdowns have tanked ridership (thus revenue) on public transportation. The government creates the problem, the government pays our way out of it.
Anyway, PETER, thanks for thinking of me! I had so little idea I was so famous.
My last two contacts with public transportation were these:
(1) Last July riding an almost empty train on the MBTA Red Line, North Quincy to Boston, this on a Monday late morning. I was heartbroken. So many dozens of times I’ve ridden the Red Line when the trains were gloriously full.
(2) Last month was in downtown Milwaukee looking for a place to park. Headed for the Amtrak station hoping there would be a parking space left. There were, after the morning trains had all departed, about twenty cars parked there. It made me sick.
Oh yes, for me your comments (whether I agree with them or not) are always one of the highlights of reading Newswire!