CHICAGO — Union Pacific has issued a Request for Qualifications for property acquisition services for a portion of the CREATE Program’s 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project to be overseen by UP. The property acquisition will be part of Project EW2, the Belt Junction and 80th Street Junction realignments, between Ashland Avenue and the Dan Ryan […]
LAC-MÉGANTIC, Quebec — Two key agreements to allow work to begin on the bypass to reroute rail traffic out of downtown Lac-Mégantic have been signed, Canadian Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Friday, setting the stage for the first work to move forward more than a decade after the derailment and fire that killed 47 people. […]
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Amtrak is operating two days of trips along CPKC’s former Milwaukee Road River Subdivision in Minnesota to recognize the company as Amtrak’s best performing Class I railroad in 2022. The trains make a round trip from St. Paul Union Depot to La Crescent, Minn., where they are turned on the wye […]
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A broken rail led to a December 2019 derailment and fire involving a Canadian Pacific crude oil train near Guernsey, Saskatchewan, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in a report released Thursday. The incident, along with another derailment in the same area about two months later, led to changes in Canadian […]
SAN CARLOS, Calif. — Caltrain on Thursday unveiled its initial plans for electrified service, which call for faster trains and a simplified schedule when electric operation begins in its San Francisco-San Jose corridor. Completion of the ongoing electrification project is currently expected in fall 2024. The plans call for 104 weekday trains, including four trains […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Passenger service commenced for Indonesia’s first high speed rail service on Oct. 2, 2023. The 140-kilometer (87-mile) route connects Jakarta and Bandung, the country’s capital and a popular tourist destination, respectively. The Nikkei Asia reports that the new eight-car WHOOSH train — an acronym for “Waktu Hemat, Operasi Optimal, Sistem Hebat,” meaning […]
WASHINGTON — Chicago-area commuter railroad Metra has asked a federal court to review the Surface Transportation Board’s decision to approve the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger as well as a subsequent decision that covers post-merger oversight. Metra’s suit, filed on Sept. 29 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was […]
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has launched intermodal service linking Mexico with points in the Southeast via Memphis. “In tandem with our diverse customer base, including our private asset and rail container channel partners, this new service introduces the largest influx of intermodal capacity for the Southeastern U.S. market out of Mexico,” UP said in […]
NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday released a 20-year assessment of the transit system’s needs over the next 20 years, calling it an “unconstrainted view of the MTA’s needs, rather than constraining it to meet an arbitrary budget target.” The resulting document, entitled “The Future Rides With Us,” is available here. (A […]
MONTREAL — The Canadian National Railway computer outage that disrupted GO Transit and VIA Rail Canada trains on Tuesday was caused by a software upgrade, CN said on Wednesday. CN spokesman Jonathan Abecassis told CTV News that the railroad had determined the problem was because of “an internal systems upgrade, which affected CN’s ability to […]
MANCHESTER, England — In a speech today (Oct. 4) at the annual Conservative Party conference, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced cancellation of construction of the second stage of the planned high speed rail project known as HS2. That segment was to link Manchester and Birmingham. The decision — if it survives an election due […]
Dallas-Houston high speed rail AUSTIN, Texas — Two U.S. Congressmen from Texas expressed heavy opposition towards proposed federal funding for a planned high-speed rail service between Dallas and Houston. Amtrak announced its partnership with the Texas Central Railroad LLC for the project in August 2023 and jointly submitted federal grant applications for both study and […]
