Center Staff Tours Colorado Rail and Track Test Facilities
On Monday April 24th while in Colorado for the National Rail Car Consortium Conference, Center staff pulled on steel-toed boots and spent a day touring the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo. During the tour, our staff had a chance to meet with several engineers and instructors to discuss developments in railroading communications and signaling technologies including Positive Train Control. Representatives from the Center and TTCI also took time to discuss possible opportunities for partnering with each other on training initiatives and courseware development.
TTCI is a unique property in the railroading industry; it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and it manages the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) Transportation Technology Center (TTC). Their facilities are located on a 52-square mile, secure and remote site that operates with a vast array of specialized laboratories and track. Their work focuses on researching and testing railroad technology as well as security and emergency response training.
Our long-standing notions about mobility are about to change: In the emerging mobility ecosystem, public transportation will be more important than ever. Why? Because it will function as the backbone of a multimodal system involving many different partners and interests.
Yes, public transport can operate at a profit, but it needs several conditions in place to do so. These conditions will of course vary in shape and form from place to place depending on base conditions, but the overall key is to approach public transport as more than just a vehicle for movement - it should be treated as a key enabler to a city's liveability.
"I have no doubt the technology will be there," said "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner and engineering consultant. "But again I come back to the very basic point, these ideas are not necessarily for the public good. It's going to be good for a certain class of people, the ones that are in their limousines stuck in traffic behind a thousand Ubers and Lyfts."
Microtransit's routing software is a brass ring for underfunded agencies struggling to make barren routes more efficient and add capacity to overloaded lines. Rightsizing some vehicles, adding more flexibility to routes, following patterns of demand to supplement seats: That all makes a lot of sense for them, and it's what other services like Bridj still promise.
The signal system is the hidden, unglamorous backbone of the subway, controlling when trains can move down the tracks. But it is so outdated that it cannot identify precisely where trains are, requiring more room between them. And when it fails, trains stop, delays pile up and riders fume.
While bus ridership is down citywide - and especially in Manhattan - there are some routes that are bucking the trend. One that's gaining riders is the M86, which got a package of upgrades from DOT and the MTA in 2015.
LaHood made it clear he is open to anything, including ideas for tearing down the setup that has existed since Metro carried its first passengers in 1976. That includes rewriting the WMATA compact and installing a federal control board to oversee the agency until a new governance structure is established.
During Mr. Christie's nearly eight-year tenure, a state subsidy to New Jersey Transit, the nation's third-busiest railroad, was cut by over 90 percent. The governor famously stopped an earlier plan to build a new Hudson River tunnel, even as constant problems plagued the aging rail infrastructure between New York and New Jersey.
All four DART train lines - Orange, Green, Blue and Red - now run on the same track through downtown. DART wants to reroute the Orange and Green lines on the subway to increase capacity.
Known as the Orange Line, the route would operate on existing tracks to provide a one-seat ride between the two destinations, VTA spokeswoman Stacey Hendler Ross said.
Trump originally said securing congressional backing to invest $1 trillion for infrastructure could become a bipartisan cinch. But Democrats are not the only hurdles. The president could encounter plenty of GOP opposition: Republicans want to cut federal spending, not increase it, and rural-state conservatives are not sure they'd ever see private investment in roads and bridges in the least populated parts of the country.
As outlined, the Greater RVA Transit Vision Plan would be completed by 2040 - but that's far too late. Right at this moment, planners estimate that at least 55 percent of our jobs will be accessible to transit through this program. Ten years from now, that will not be true.
Back in 1967, in a city divided between the powers of the Cold War, West Berlin canceled its last streetcar services, focusing its transit network on trains, subways, and buses. Meanwhile, East Berlin's streetcars soldiered on, resulting in a tram system that today is largely nonexistent in the city's former western sector. But 28 years after reunification, the city has realized its error.
TWU has about 200,000 members, including 140,000 active members. About 42,000 are in Local 100, which Samuelsen headed and which represents New York City bus and subway workers. TWU also represents municipal transportation workers in Philadelphia, Miami, Houston, Columbus and San Francisco.
Without a concurrent shift away from private vehicle ownership and toward ride sharing, the potential for electric, autonomous vehicles to reduce traffic and sprawl are severely limited, and CO2 reductions will be significantly less than with sharing, the report says.
