Still more Thursday morning rail news:
— Reflecting the ongoing loss of ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago’s Metra will make significant service cuts as of Monday on its three lowest-frequency routes, with two of those being reduced to one daily round trip. The Heritage Corridor to Joliet, Ill., and North Central Service to Antioch, which only offer Monday-Friday service, will each be cut to one round trip daily, while the SouthWest Service to Manhattan will be reduced to two round trips day. The Heritage Corridor, currently served by three inbound and four outbound trains, has only been serving a total of about 35 passengers per day, Metra reports, while the North Central’s five peak round trips have handled a total of about 65 riders and the South West Service’s five round trips have handled about 120 passnengers. Off-peak service on those lines have handled only a handful of riders. “We hope our customers understand why we are making these schedule reductions,” Metra CEO/Executive Director Jim Derwinski said in a release announcing the changes. “We are trying to find the balance between providing service for essential workers while stemming the huge losses we are seeing in fare revenue and sales taxes, our two major sources of operating funding. We are being forced to make some tough decisions.”
— The suspension of Amtrak Downeaster service has been extended to at least May 31, the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority has announced, reflecting the extension of Maine’s stay-at-home order by Gov. Janet Mills. The agency says it is using the time to address several maintenance-of-way projects, including several that were scheduled for later in the year and would have required service interruptions.
— Work is scheduled to begin in May on repairs to a footbridge damaged by a CSX Transportation derailment in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., in December. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy reported in a Facebook post that a contractor has been retained to begin work on the bridge, the Goodloe E. Byron Memorial Pedestrian Walkway, which is part of the Appalachian Trail. The Canal Towns Partnership, which represents communities along the C&O Canal, said in a Facebook post that the work is slated to begin the week of May 11 with repairs completed by the end of July. The bridge was damaged when seven cars of a CSX freight derailed on a bridge over the Potomac River [see “CSX derailment knocks out Appalachian Trail footbridge,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 21, 2019.]
