Passenger Bus, Rail and Motorcoach Industry News

Grant for the City of Tavares, Fla., to help with upgrades along a 57-mile stretch of Florida Central Railroad track between Orlando and Umatilla, Fla.

In response to an Amtrak collision and derailment last year, advised the FRA and FTA to provide railroad employees with best practices regarding the use of jumper wires when performing signal maintenance operations on active rails.

The Hopson Road Project is the first of 12 Piedmont Improvement Program projects dedicated to separating rail and highway traffic. The project will ultimately eliminate 50 crossings between Charlotte and Raleigh.

An XpressWest representative attributed the extensive wait to the complexity of the project and amount of due diligence the Federal Railroad Administration must complete to approve the loan.

The decisions will make the corridor eligible for new trains, improved frequencies, help improve on-time performance and ultimately reduce travel time to less than four hours.

Will support the $8.4 million Mount Vernon Siding Extension Project, which will reduce intercity passenger and freight rail congestion, add rail capacity and improve a substantial bottleneck, providing long-term benefits to both Amtrak’s Cascades service as well as freight operations.

Included heavier continuously-welded rail, bridge work, new tie installation and ballast work. Improvements enable the scheduled running time for the line to be reduced by about a half hour and passenger-train track speeds in signaled territory to increase from 50 to 79 miles per hour.

The Indiana Gateway Project will receive $71.3 million. Improvements include track reconfiguration and track and signal upgrades, all of which will help improve service reliability while creating jobs and relieving congestion. Virginia will receive $74.8 million to continue development of the Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor.

SSPs would be designed to help the railroad proactively identify and mitigate or eliminate hazards and the resulting risks on each railroad’s system.

Approved for two routes connecting the Hampton Roads area to Richmond, Va. and the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor.