MTA Metro-North Railroad’s branch line from Bridgeport to Waterbury, Conn., is being upgraded, and plans call for more trains to run on weekdays, starting next June.
BOOK REVIEW: Amtrak, America’s Railroad – Transportation’s Orphan and its Struggle for Survival. By Geoffrey Doughty, Jeffrey Darbee, and Eugene Harmon. Indiana University Press, 2021.
In October, I reported on three events that took place within three days, all of which concerned the possibility of more Amtrak-operated state-supported trains in the Midwest. The events are now over,
It’s the big news in Washington and everywhere else in the country. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for which the Biden Administration had fought so hard and made so many deals finally made it through Congress on Nov. 5, and President Joe Biden signed it into law on Nov. 15.
The election of 2020 was one of the most dramatic in recent times. That included the transit scene, where Bay Area voters agreed to chip in to keep Caltrain going and Austinites voted to expand their rail transit. But voters in Portland, Ore., voted down a tax on employers that would have financed a new light rail line, and Gwinnett County residents in the Atlanta suburbs voted again to keep a MARTA rail line out of their county.
King of Prussia (known by locals as “KOP”) is not a town, but a sprawl dominated by a mall, northwest of Philadelphia. It started as the location of the King of Prussia Tavern late in the 18th Century, named after Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 until 1784. He was highly regarded for modernizing the government of his country, promoting the arts, and especially for his skill as a military leader. His descendants established modern Germany nearly a century after his death. Today, KOP is the proposed destination for an extension of SEPTA’s Norristown High-Speed Line.
In an unusual twist of circumstances, there are three events ongoing at this writing that have a lot to say about Amtrak corridors and trains in the Midwest. All were scheduled to take place within a three-day span.
After only six weeks in office, New York state’s new chief executive, Gov. Kathy Hochul, is experiencing a test of her skills to walk the political tightrope; an essential task for any politician, especially in this part of the country.
For many years, Albert L. Papp, a longtime transit advocate in New Jersey, has referred to the river that separates New York and New Jersey geographically as the “Hudson Ocean.” Today, a conflict between the transit providers in the two states (with Connecticut also playing a minor role) provides the latest example of a feud that bestows credibility upon the moniker that Papp conferred upon the river.
RAILWAY AGE, OCTOBER 2022 ISSUE: The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, free of Andrew Cuomo’s political micro-management, is under a new governor who has promised “hands-off.” What’s next?