The 2018 University of Delaware Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering “Big Data in Railroad Maintenance Planning Conference,” held Dec. 13-14, spotlighted the progression the industry is making in dealing with Big Data—“converting the mountain of data collected by railway systems into effective maintenance planning information, with a focus on railway needs and practical applications.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on Dec. 21 awarded $46.30 million in grant funding for 11 projects in 10 states to assist with deploying Positive Train Control (PTC) systems, marking the second selection of PTC systems deployment projects under the Fiscal Year 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act administered via the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program, collectively totaling $250 million.
Paresh Patel, P.E., has joined HNTB Corp. as an Associate Vice President and Project Director, Transit and Rail, based in New York City. Patel comes to HNTB following more than 30 years with MTA New York City Transit in design and construction experience.
Norfolk Southern has appointed Jason A. Zampi Vice President and Controller, reporting to Executive VP and CFO Cynthia C. Earhart.
For CSX, the fallout from former CEO E. Hunter Harrison’s December 2017 death only eight months after he was hired at a substantial premium continues. According to a Dec. 15, 2018 report by Andrew Pantazi in the Florida Times-Union, three CSX shareholders filed a derivative suit this year against the company’s board, “arguing it committed misconduct in hiring Harrison and not sharing information about Harrison’s health with shareholders before a 2017 vote to pay for an $84 million benefits package for [him].”
By 2026, provided the procurement is fully funded and all options are exercised, New Jersey Transit—empowered by an infusion of much-needed funding by Governor Phil Murphy following a starvation diet imposed by his predecessor, Chris Christie—will have replaced its entire fleet of aging single-level cars with nearly 650 new Multilevels, many of which will be powered electric vehicles, the first of their type in North America.
On Monday Feb. 11, 2019, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific—both of which are rolling out their own versions of Precision Scheduled Railroading—will deploy jointly developed new routing protocols for domestic and international intermodal interline services.
MTA New York City Transit announced Dec. 10 that as part of its Save Safe Seconds campaign to safely improve subway performance, a multidisciplinary team of engineers and safety officials, working closely with the agency’s unionized signal maintainers, have begun raising “antiquated” speed limits on certain track segments and repairing faulty speed restriction signals throughout the subway system.
Railway Age December 2018, Cover Story: BNSF Railway Co. Executive Chairman Matthew K. Rose will retire from the railroad in April of 2019, after 26 years of service. At the end of his tenure, Rose will have been Executive Chairman for six years, and CEO for the prior 13 years. He also served in senior marketing and operations positions at BNSF and predecessor Burlington Northern before assuming the CEO role in December 2000.
Financial Edge, December 2018 Railway Age: On Oct. 22, American Railcar Industries Inc. (ARI) announced that it was being acquired by a subsidiary of ITE Rail Fund L.P. (ITE). The acquisition price was $70 per share, for a total purchase price (including debt) of $1.7 billion. That price represented a 51% premium to the previous day’s close (Oct. 19) of $46.29 per share. As ITE is privately held, ARI will become a private company at acquisition.