Transportation Safety Board to investigate winter increase in grade-crossing accidents
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is opening an investigation to determine why grade-crossing accidents increase during winter months. The agency’s statistics show such accidents increase by 61% in non-vacation winter months (January and February) compared with non-vacation, non-winter months (May, June and September). Along with comparing factors in those time periods, a secondary objective will be to learn more about factors — human, environmental, or crossing related — that contribute to such accidents, interviews with drivers and eyewitnesses to recent accidents. The agency’s Safety Issue Investigations usually are completed within two years.
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/medias-media/communiques/rail/2021/r20h0082-20210623.html
State senator asks FBI, FRA, Hawaii attorney general to investigate rail agency’s chairman
The lone Republican in Hawaii’s 24-person state Senate is asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Transit Administration, and state Attorney General’s Office to investigate “possible criminal acts” by a member of the agency overseeing Honolulu’s problem-plagued rail transit system. The Honolu Star-Advertiser reports Kurt Fevella wants Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board chairman Toby Martyn investigated based on media reports Martyn may have had benefitted financially from the sale of HART bonds, as well as a consulting contract for a former HART board chairwoman, and possible Sunshine Law violations.
https://news.yahoo.com/state-senator-kurt-fevella-seeks-161000732.html
First station debuts on San Diego Trolley extension
San Diego’s light rail system has unveiled the first station that will be part of its Mid-Coast Trolley project, an 11-mile, $2 billion extension of the Metropolitan Transit System Blue Line north from downtown to UC San Diego and University City. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports the VA Medical Center Station is one of nine scheduled to be debuted this summer and fall, prior to the beginning of operations on the new route. “The unveiling of this station is a momentous milestone in the construction of the Mid-Coast extension of the UC San Diego Blue Line Trolley,” said Encinitas Mayor Catherine Blakespear, chair of the San Diego Association of Goverments, which is building the extension and then will hand it over to MTS.
