— After initially reporting service would resume Monday, Montreal’s Exo commuter rail service began operating trains on its Candiac line service Friday afternoon, ending a shutdown of more than three weeks because of a blockade by Mohawk protesters at Kahnawake, Quebec, the North Shore News reports.
— Austin, Texas, transit agency Capital Metro announced more details for its proposed “Project Connect” expansion, including a 1.6-mile downtown section of subway operation for two proposed light rail lines. KVUE-TV reports the plans would also add two stations to the existing commuter rail Red Line, and create a new commuter Green Line through east Austin.
— A plan to fund replacement of New Jersey’s aging Portal Bridge, a major trouble spot on the Northeast Corridor, faces new difficulties after the U.S. Justice Department issued an opinion that the funding mechanism would violate the Amtrak Reform Act. Bloomberg reports that the opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel says NJ Transit has no legal right to divert some of the funds it pays to Amtrak for use of the Northeast Corridor to the bridge project.
I’m not surprised by the nonstop Acela notice. Except for advance sections during WWII, PRR, PC and Amtrak have never been able to draw enough riders to support nonstop NYP-WAS service, COVID-19 or not. There’s just too much intermediate traffic at Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore. Ease of making intermediate stops is the advantage NEC rail has over aviation.
When I lived in San Antonio in the late 80’s (Air Force) there was talk of SA and Austin city limits eventually almost touching each other as most areas in between are/were unincorporated and each was sucking up land as fast as they could.
Newsflash for Gerald McFarlane: Some of the right wing media went absolutely insane over Ebola, which only ever affected 11 people in the U.S., of whom only two died. Twenty people in the U.S. have already died of COVID-19, and over 4,000 worldwide, so this is already at a far higher rate than Ebola. Because the U.S. so muffed the response, there aren’t even tests to know how many people are actually affected with a disease that has AT LEAST a 2% lethality rate. Know what other disease happened to have just about that same fatality level? The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed around 675,000 Americans, the equivalent of machine gunning every man, woman and child in Milwaukee. Not worried because it “only affects old people?” Bulletin: Those of us with gray hair are not that anxious to die. That age limit also is also not universal. Among the deaths, Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who first reported the disease, who was 34 and otherwise healthy – and a doctor.
The entire country of Italy is shuttered: not because of “fake news,” but because the hospitals there are overrun with genuinely sick people. We should not panic; that much is true in what you say. That fixes nothing. But it is certainly of growing importance to take proper precautions, one of which is avoiding crowds as possible. Not taking this seriously IS the only fake news. Sadly, some with an all-too-obvious political agenda are trying to sweep reality under the carpet. The mayor of Philadelphia did that in 1918, when he refused to cancel a big bond rally during the flu epidemic there. Within two weeks, 4,500 people in the city had died in the epidemic, and they had run out of places to stack bodies
Now wash your hands and stop touching your face. And avoid crowds. The places that did that in 1918 came out pretty well…
Mr McFarlane: I am curtailing travel in part because I don’t want to get stranded somewhere for 2-4 weeks. Which may have everything to do with where I am in the country or the world, not how I am feeling.
Regarding the Portal Bridge. What the Justice Department issued was an opinion, and not a ruling. There is no force behind it. I have opinions on many things (Charles Landey, you’re ugly (grin)), but they do not have the force of law.
What this does do however is to state the position of the DOJ on the matter, and presumably (rebuttable presumption) the position of the current administration. I don’t know what NJ Transit and/or Amtrak have up their sleeves, but the next step is for those two parties to issue their own opinions – at which point it starts on the path to the Room of the Man in the Black Robe.
I could formulate defensible arguments for both sides of this issue but since this is headed for litigation I should not muddy the waters with what I think. Besides, I’m not being paid to do it.
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Austin is well ahead of San Antonio in rail transit. [There is a forecast that Austin’s metropolitan area population will surpass that of San Antonio.]
Mr. McFarlane, it was more like a BSA. COVID-19 is much more contagious than SARS or MERS, and has spread world wide. Even if the young can brush it off, they still will bring it to their elders.
Newsflash for the American traveling public: COVID-19 issue has been blown out of proportion to the real issue, if you are between the ages of new born and 69, you will most likely feel no or minimal discomfort(this is from Health Care professionals), if however, you are over 70 or have a compromised immune system then you have a greater chance of illness leading to death(still a point(.)7% chance, compared to 10% for SARS, 35% for MERS and 50% for Ebola). This has been a PSA.
Now back to the topic at hand, not only is it affecting Amtrak, but the airlines, air travel is way down because of all the cancelled conferences and events, this is just people being stupid and uninformed as usual.
Regarding the Acela express suspension just goes to show what a looser of a money pit this train is, obviously the weakest link must have had a pretty low passenger count to begin with to get to this point so quick.