Elevator-Escalator Consortium Welcomes Its Newest Member
The Center is pleased to announce that Amtrak has officially joined the Elevator-Escalator Consortium. As an active member, they will be attending the upcoming Elevator-Escalator meetings in early March, 2017. Amtrak elevator/escalator workers are represented by IBEW and IAM and will directly benefit from Consortium training materials. Representatives from Amtrak along with other member agencies and unions will discuss needs in the following topic areas:
Future direction and scope of work for the Consortium
Working on Apprenticeship issues as they apply to each member
Addressing and development of training, testing, and inspections items
Amtrak operates a nationwide rail network, serving more than 500 destinations in 46 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces on more than 21,300 miles of routes. The company has more than 20,000 employees. In FY 2015, Amtrak transported over 30.8 million passengers. On an average day, more than 84,600 passengers ride more than 300 Amtrak trains.
The U.S. Department of Transportation will conduct a "review" of transportation projects in Maryland to determine whether state officials violated civil rights regulations in their policies and decisions. The review, announced in a letter sent by a department official on the last full day of the Obama administration, was in response to complaints by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other groups challenging Gov. Larry Hogan's 2015 decision to cancel a long-planned light-rail project in Baltimore known as the Red Line.
The traveling public, the transportation planning community, the media, and policymakers have all been fascinated by the evolution of transportation network companies (TNCs) and self-driving technology. A variety of adjectives have been used to characterize the significance of these emerging trends in transportation, with terms such as "transformational" describing the high expectations resulting from technology development. Stunning valuations of Uber's money-losing business and high-profile pronouncements from the likes of Tesla's Elon Musk and Google's prior program director, Chris Urmson, added to the credibility of optimistic pronouncements.
States have submitted more than 300 transportation projects to be considered by President Trump as he puts together a massive infrastructure bill. The National Governors Association (NGA), which was asked by the transition team in early December to start collecting the requests, says a total of 43 states and territories have weighed in so far. More states are expected to send in their infrastructure requests in the coming weeks, which were first reported by Bloomberg on Monday.
State legislatures are about to embark in tough negotiations on how to raise billions of dollars for transportation. How much of that goes into transit is expected to be a sticking point for Republicans. So when Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, a Democrat from Arvada who sits on the Senate Transportation Committee, gives a lengthy Q&A to a transit advocacy group, it's worth a read. To boot, Zenzinger has deep ties to The Transit Alliance. She might be a new senator, but she toed the political middle of the road like a veteran.
It took about two weeks, nearly 7,500 miles, nine countries and two continents. But before this freight train could roll to a well-deserved stop, it had to break through one final barrier, a banner proclaiming its historic achievement: "First freight train from China to UK - Yiwu to London."
SacRT will use the FTA funds to develop, implement and test a system providing three-way communication among track workers, train operators and dispatchers in the central office, according to a SacRT press release.
Activists are debating the national political implications of the crowd sizes for Friday's inauguration versus Saturday's Women's March. I can tell you that the crowds combined to create enormous stress on the transit system in the nation's capital over two days, and that from what I saw, the transit system performed very well if not perfectly.
In the wake of recent commuter train crashes in which engineers were later diagnosed with sleep apnea, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to intensify its efforts to combat the disorder within its workforce. Under the proposal, the MTA's sleep apnea program will thoroughly screen workers and provide specialized priority treatment to roughly 20,000 subway train operators and conductors, and bus drivers. The MTA assessed proposals from 13 health care companies for the program's potential expansion.
Metra's on-time performance rate for 2016 came in at 96 percent, the Chicago commuter railroad announced yesterday. Metra's goal is to operate at least 95 percent of its trains on time.
President Donald Trump hosted a "listening session" with American labor union leaders Monday, but some central players in the labor movement didn't get the invite. In a sign of how Trump may seek to split organized labor as president, he limited the gathering to representatives of the construction and building trades unions, organizations that represent the type of blue-collar, manufacturing sector workers he championed in his campaign.
In recent years, researchers have documented the benefits of apprenticeship to workers, the government, and firms. With an expanded apprenticeship system, a Trump administration, collaborating with Congress, can improve the earnings and status of workers, especially those without a bachelor's degree.
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) is poised to be the first college campus in the nation to convert its buses to an all-electric fleet. The student-funded and operated Anteater Express shuttle service is acquiring 20 buses from BYD for $15 million.
Daring Mr. Trump to make good on his grand infrastructure promises, Senate Democrats on Tuesday will unveil a trillion-dollar plan to rebuild the nation's roads, railways, airports, waterways and sewer systems over 10 years. "From our largest cities to our smallest towns, communities across the country are struggling to meet the challenges of aging infrastructure," Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, will say. "Our urban and rural communities have their own unique set of infrastructure priorities, and this proposal would provide funding to address those needed upgrades that go beyond the traditional road and bridge repair."
As politicians debate the merits of increased federal spending on infrastructure, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy asked two prominent economists-Harvard University's Lawrence Summers and Edward Glaeser-about the economic case for stepped-up infrastructure spending and their thoughts on how to spend any additional money most wisely. Here are the highlights of the conversation.
