RailSolutions, LLC has promoted Senior Vice President Mike Mahoney to President, effective Jan. 1, 2021. Mahoney, who succeeds Rob Blankemeyer, will assume responsibility for the company’s day-to-day operations. Blankemeyer will remain with RailSolutions as Senior Vice President.
From bringing families together for the Holidays to that first electric train set beneath the tree (I remember mine well, from 1963), railroads and Christmas have been linked for generations. Here’s a particularly inspiring story of kindness and caring provided to us by Elizabeth Cho, who handles public relations at Siemens Mobility.
On December 15, the day after the Electoral College certified Joe Biden as the next President of the United States, Biden announced that he has nominated former Presidential candidate and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg as his Transportation Secretary.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on Dec. 14, 2020 certified that regional/commuter rail agency South Florida Regional Transportation Authority’s IETMS (Interoperable Electronic Train Management System) complies with the technical requirements for Positive Train Control (PTC), thereby meeting the federally mandated Dec. 31, 2020 final implementation deadline.
Three locations on the BNSF network, one each in Kansas, Missouri and Texas, have been designated as Certified Sites, part of the railroads’s Premier Parks, Sites and Transload program, bringing the total to 27. The program’s goal is “to provide an inventory of rail-served sites that are available for immediate development,”
The $3.3 billion One Vanderbilt Avenue skyscraper, at 1,401 feet New York City’s second-tallest office tower after One World Trade Center, is home to a $220 million TOD (transit-oriented development) project benefiting adjacent Grand Central Terminal and the forthcoming MTA Long Island Rail Road East Side Access project. Designed by Stantec, the TOD project is a P3 (public-private partnership) of the New York MTA and developer SL Green Realty designed to improve rail transit access and use for some 750,000 (pre-pandemic) daily Metro-North commuter rail and NYC Transit subway riders, as well as future LIRR riders.
SNC Lavalin wholly owned subsidiary TransitNEXT has selected Siemens Mobility to provide the signaling and train control system for Ottawa’s 10-mile, eight-station Trillium Line South Extension project. The contract also includes updating the existing Trillium Line’s signaling system and installing ATP (Automatic Train Protection) technology on the entire network. ATP “will be increasingly important, given the higher ridership levels expected with the Trillium Line’s new South Extension and the connection to Ottawa’s Macdonald-Cartier International Airport,” Siemens noted. The project is expected to be completed in 2022.
TÜV SÜD, an independent testing and certification authority, has certified Wabtec Corp’s new Metroflexx brake, which the company calls “next-generation braking systems for the mass transit rail industry.” The certification “validates that the system meets the safety, quality and performance standards set at an organizational, local or international level.”
New Jersey Transit has approved entering into a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for the new, $1.8 billion fixed-span Portal North Bridge on the Northeast Corridor, crossing the Hackensack River in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Portal North, part of the massive Gateway Program, will replace 110-year-old Portal Bridge, a mechanical-trouble-plagued swing bridge built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1910 as part of its New York Improvements project.
Railway Age has named Canadian Pacific President and CEO Keith Creel the 58th annual recipient of its Railroader of the Year Award. A cover profile of Creel and his leadership at CP will appear in the January 2021 issue.