Camden, N.J., transportation center to receive $250 million renovation
The Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, N.J. – a hub for NJ Transit RiverLine light rail, PATCO rapid transit, 26 NJ Transit bus lines, and a proposed light rail route – will receive a $250 million renovation. NJ.com reports New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced the project with a request for proposals at a Wednesday ceremony at the South Jersey hub. The project will begin with the proposal and an initial design process expected to take about nine months. “It is time to bring this transportation hub up to par with what’s happening in Camden [redevelopment],†Camden Mayor Frank Moran. “Camden depends on it, folks use it.â€
Court reluctantly allows UP engineer to keep job despite defecating on equipment
A Union Pacific engineer who defecated on a connection between two locomotives and told a supervisor he “left a present” for him will get to keep his job, a U.S. appeals court has ruled with apparent reluctance. The website Law & Crime reports the U.S. Appeals Court for the Eighth Circuit upheld a lower-court by the National Rail Adjustment Board; that arbitration body criticized the behavior of engineer Matthew Lebsack but said the firing would be an unjust overcorrection. The Eighth Circuit opinion said it shared a district court’s “bewilderment at the board’s conclusion that a company cannot fire someone for purposefully defecating on company property,” but was bound only to determine if the board acted within the scope of its authority, not to rule on the merits of the decision.
NTSB postpones meeting on ‘Most Wanted List’
The National Transportation Safety Board has postponed a meeting scheduled for March 9 in which it was to determine its 2021-22 Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements. In a press release, the agency said the postponement was to further refine the proposed list. No new date was set. The board had planned the meeting in response to a General Accounting Office report seeking more transparency in how the list was developed [see “Digest: CP, controllers union …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 1, 2021].
