Saturday rail news in brief:
— Design details for a proposal to replace a century-old Northeast Corridor bridge over the Connecticut River have been presented to harbor commissions in Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, Conn. The Connecticut Examiner reports Amtrak’s proposal for the $400 million project would replace a bascule bridge built in 1907 with a new bascule bridge 52 feet south of the existing structure. The Harbor Management Commissions in both towns were asked to determine whether the proposed project was consistent with their harbor management plans. Old Saybrook’s commission agreed with the proposal, with recommendations that two planned periods of river closure occur outside of boating season, and that Amtrak consider reuse of the current roadbad as a public access point. Old Lyme’s commission delayed approval, saying the plan was missing too many details.
— The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System board has approved a $346 million budget for 2021 including the plan for restoration of service from the current cutbacks resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The budget, approved at the same meeting that included Sharon Cooney’s selection as the agency’s new CEO [see “San Diego transit agency names first female CEO,” News Wire Digest, May 15, 2020], includes plans to return to near full service levels in early summer and all-day service with 7-minute headways on the light rail Blue Line by June 15.
— New Mexico Rail Runner service will remain suspended until at least May 31 in accordance with the state’s stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 virus. On its website, the Rio Metro Regional Transit District says it is working with the administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to develop protocols to resume Rail Runner services. District director Terry Doyle, Director of Rio Metro Regional Transit District, the agency which oversees the Rail Runner, says the agency must determine “how best to support social distancing, stringent sanitation, and other COVID-Safe Practices aboard the train. We also need to give transit service providers that connect with the train time to adjust their schedules to connect with Rail Runner service.” Rail Runner service has been suspended since March 16.
Amtrak appears to have a blind spot on dealing with river crossings, especially in areas with curving approaches and sensitive communities. They never seem to explore the possibility of tunneling and avoiding historic alignments. I’m not saying it would turn out as the best option but their high powered consultants never even study it.
If they are going to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a bridge that is essentially on a passenger line, it would seem sensible to re-look at the whole picture and redesign that (almost 200 year old) right of way for true high speed. After all, for that kind of money what’s a few tens or hundreds of million more?
That bridge at Old Saybrook is from the classic period of Honest Design in American Engineering when pin connections and not rivets were used for connecting structural members in trusses. The result in those days was that a compression member looked like a compression while a tension member (which sometimes had a turnbuckle) proudly shouted out it was a tension member. Tension and compression is how bridge trusses work and Old Saybrook has that in full view. Modern bridges, such as the new Portageville NY bridge on what was the Erie’s line to Buffalo, or the God-Awful new I-93 bridge near Boston’s North Station that has now become that city’s symbol, don’t show how they work and are pointless artifacts merely doing an invisibly banal job. Back on a cold Superbowl Sunday 2001 I took a close-up look at the Old Saybrook bridge through the afternoon light; While I was there a barge and tug came charging downriver on an outgoing tide at a ferocious clip. I got my camera ready–he made it. It was a beautiful sight–they don’t make ’em like that anymore!
Mr Larson I have no problems with ads. I do not get popups on my tablet. You might want to change browsers.
Yes, I’m with Curtis Larson. Lose the pop-up ad. It’s so annoying!
Most of what I’m reading in these news posts tells how government is controlling everything. Strange, because they don’t know how to run anything.
Are they really going to make it look like it’s 100 years old? Sorry, but that bridge is ugly and I see no reason to replicate the design. How about a modern sleek curving arch style structure with a built in curvature to eliminate the sharp approach curves to speed up service?It seems like there is plenty of room to build a fixed span and Amtrak should be able to sell it to the locals since there will not be any restriction to boat traffic which they should love.
Trains..how about deleting the annoying, repetitive pop up ad?