New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo toured one of the two North (Hudson) River rail tunnels on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor linking New Jersey and New York to view corrosion and damage, and called on President Trump to support funding for repairs.
Federal Railroad Administrator Ron Batory on Oct. 17 completed a second series of meetings with senior leadership of Positive Train Control (PTC) system suppliers that are directly associated with the eight railroads FRA has identified as “most at risk of not meeting statutory requirements by the end of the year.”
The acquisition of a pedestrian simulation software provider and the launch of a new design application are helping Bentley Systems Inc. integrate comprehensive digital workflows into passenger railway station design.
Bentley Systems now offers integration between its ProjectWise 365 Services and Microsoft 365. “The collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Flow, alongside analytics from Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Power BI, can now be applied to mainstream automated digital workflows within ProjectWise,” the company said.
Bentley Systems Inc., a global provider of comprehensive software for infrastructure design, construction and operations, has announced the forthcoming availability of iTwinTM Services, digital twin cloud services for infrastructure projects (project digital twins) and assets (performance digital twins). iTwinTM Services can be integrated with Bentley’s Connected Data Environment (CDE) for ProjectWise and AssetWise users.
An 85-year-old traction power facility at Metuchen, N.J., on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor—originally installed by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1933 during a major Depression-era electrification program—was recently upgraded with state-of-the art technology from Siemens Mobility Division.
Timely accident investigations are critical to the future of safe transportation operations, for a number of reasons. First, they must begin expeditiously. As the clock runs, evidence can deteriorate or become corrupted. Witness memories of events fade, sometimes to the detriment of actual fact-finding. Second, the search for cause factors and efforts to remediate are delayed, leaving people and property at risk of more accidents and incidents caused by the same risk factors. Third, as time passes, other accidents and incidents demand investigation, putting a strain on investigatory resources.
WSP USA has appointed Lindsay Wood Transit and Rail Market Lead for company’s Texas-Mountain region, promotion from her prior role as Transit and Rail Manager, Texas, in which she led project and technical services roles for such clients as Capital Metro, Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, Texas Department of Transportation, Dallas Area Rapid Transit and the Gulf Coast Rail District.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to “strengthen their relationship and future cooperation … in recognition of the common interests of public transportation industries in the U.S. and internationally. Both APTA and UITP will strive to work together on areas of mutual benefit to their memberships and, in so doing, maximize the quality and value of their member services in a variety of ways,” the organizations said in a joint statement.
An Amtrak official told a Senate hearing the agency would continue to operate passenger service through the Southwest on routes exempted from Positive Train Control.
