The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is providing a preview of the 13 topics to be featured in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program this year. Program grants will total $1.9 million.
Have you every missed something so completely that you question your own connections to reality? Like maybe missing the year or more of notices and communications from the Federal Railroad Administration regarding its “Miscellaneous Amendments to Brake Systems Safety Standards and Codification of Waivers” (Docket FRA-2018-0093)?
RAILWAY AGE, DECEMBER 2020 ISSUE (updated Jan. 4, 2021): Let’s get moving planning and implementing the technology to achieve the business benefits envisioned when the first PTC systems were being developed.
Positive Train Control (PTC) is now in operation on all 57,536 required freight and passenger railroad route-miles, ahead of the federal deadline of Dec. 31, the Federal Railroad Administration reported Dec. 29.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise regulations on changes to Positive Train Control (PTC) systems and reporting PTC system functioning.
Officials at New York MTA’s Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) announced Dec. 23 that implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) was complete, just ahead of the Dec. 31, 2020, federal deadline. They teamed with systems integrator Siemens Mobility and Bombardier Transportation on the project.
Congress passed the $2.3 trillion “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021” (H.R. 133), an omnibus spending bill that includes a $900 billion COVID-19 emergency relief package as well as government appropriations for fiscal year 2021, tax extenders and other provisions. While many in the rail industry expressed appreciation—stressing that additional transit aid, for instance, will be needed—outgoing President Donald Trump did not. He refused to approve the bill—calling for higher direct relief checks to Americans and other changes—but he finally signed it into law late Dec. 27, averting a government shutdown Dec. 29.
In New Jersey Transit’s epic struggle with implementing Positive Train Control by the Dec. 31, 2020 federal deadline, the agency came in under the wire(s), literally.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has released a final rule requiring 40 states and the District of Columbia to implement highway/rail grade crossing action plans. The remaining ten states already have plans, as required by the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (RSIA), and must now update those plans.
There are many things that can’t be hurried in this life, and probably shouldn’t be, like wine and bread (let beaujolais nouveau and matzoh be a warning to us all). There are other things that could use a bit of hurrying, like medical fitness for duty standards and the National Transportation Safety Board, but those two have proven themselves so resistant to urgings, proddings, cris du coeur, that they’ve almost worn me down. Almost.
