New York City Transit President Andy Byford resigned on Jan. 23. Andy was hired in January 2018 to improve and transform New York City’s 116-year-old subway, North America’s largest, and he was doing just that. But he got fed up with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who thinks he’s in charge of running New York’s railways. Now, someone else will have to carry on—if they’re capable—and that remains to be seen.
When it comes to the news of Jan. 16, 2020 of Amtrak approaching the State of Tennessee to gin-up interest in its latest pitch for the highly questionable PRIIA legislation, it is best to remember what long-ago Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” As this action looks like a maneuver to manipulate Congress to allow Amtrak to disassemble long-distance trains and reallocate their equipment, I intend to ensure sufficient sunlight is evident here when Amtrak touts its newly discovered Nashville-Atlanta route.
Listen to the newest Podcast from RT&S Editor-in-Chief Bill Wilson.
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) recently announced a $790 million Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) with the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) for the Federal Way Link Extension Project in King County, Wash., via FTA’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) Program.
New Amtrak state-of-the-art, high-speed trainsets are scheduled to enter service on the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in 2021, as Amtrak and Alstom have partnered to introduce the new Acela fleet.
Ever since he came to Amtrak from the airline industry, President and CEO Richard Anderson has “railed” against so-called “experiential” trains, an expression he often uses in disparaging the roughly 15 long-distance trains in Amtrak’s skeletal national network. Anderson clearly prefers corridors, and many members of the rider advocacy community also like them, but Anderson seems determined to expand those corridors by eliminating long-distance trains in what he and his followers perceive as a zero-sum game. While he often uses the word to describe his company’s long-haul trains, it does not seem clear what he dislikes about them, or whom he believes they serve and with what sort of experience.
On Jan. 23, following two years of service that saw major improvements to New York City’s 116-year-old rapid transit system, MTA New York City Transit President Andy Byford resigned.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority is providing a first look at its new, open-gangway (“Open Car End”) New York City Transit R-211 subway cars, now under construction by Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc.
“[A]nd a little child shall lead them.” Many of you will recall that this is a Biblical quote from Isaiah read at Christian Sunday Advent services last month just prior to Christmas. And this made me think of the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (now Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” and recently nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize) and which, per chance, occurred at the same time I received an e-mail from a fellow rail advocate who expressed his rabid climate denial, using such words as “I haven’t drank the climate change Kool Aid.”
The Women’s Transportation Seminar Inland Empire Chapter (WTS-IE) has named HDR’s Lisa Reece as 2019 Woman of the Year, the first time in the chapter’s history that a woman from the private sector has been honored. Reece is the company’s transportation client development leader for Southern California.
