The $10 million grant will fund approximately 11 miles of new rail track along the state-owned line and three passenger platforms in Middlebury, Vergennes and Burlington.
The U.S. Department of Transportation will provide $10 million to extend Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express passenger train service all the way to Burlington, Vermont. Currently, the service begins in New York City and stops in Rutland, Vermont.
“Transportation is always about the future. If we’re just fixing today’s problems, we’ll fall further and further behind. We already know that a growing population and increasing freight traffic will require our system to do more,” said Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. “In this round of TIGER grants, we selected projects that focus on where the country’s transportation infrastructure needs to be in the future: safer, more innovative, and more targeted to open the floodgates of opportunity across America.”
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The $10 million grant will fund approximately 11 miles of new rail track along the state-owned line and three passenger platforms in Middlebury, Vergennes and Burlington. The project will also reduce long-term maintenance costs for the state, allow passenger trains to operate up to 60 miles per hour and enhance safety at multiple railroad crossings.
Related: New round of TIGER makes $500M available
The project is one of 39 federally-funded transportation projects in 34 states selected to receive a total of nearly $500 million under the Department’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) 2015 program. Secretary Foxx announced project selections for this round of TIGER grants in October. The U.S. DOT received 627 eligible applications from 50 states and several U.S. territories, including tribal governments, requesting 20 times the $500 million available for the program, or $10.1 billion, for needed transportation projects.
With this latest round of funding, TIGER continues to invest in transformative projects that will provide significant and measurable improvements over existing conditions. The awards recognize projects nationwide that will advance key transportation goals such as safety, innovation and opportunity.
“Every week, there are communities from across the country that meet with the Federal Railroad Administration wanting, and needing, to expand passenger rail service. But many do not have the partnerships and leadership like Vermont does to move those projects from conception to reality,” said FRA Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg. “Passenger rail service has been part of Burlington’s past, and with this grant we are making it part of its future.”
This grant is part of the seventh round of TIGER grants since 2009, bringing the total grant amount to more than $4.6 billion provided to 381 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, including 134 projects supporting rural and tribal communities.
Amtrak will open grant applications March 23 for community projects near the Frederick Douglass Tunnel alignment in Baltimore as part of a $50 million investment tied to the B&P Tunnel Replacement Program.
The Denmark Station $2.3 million construction investment project includes a new 280-foot concrete boarding platform, built eight inches above the top of rail, for improved accessibility for passengers with disabilities and families with small children and much more.
Caltrain and its partners have implemented safety improvements at specific locations in response to known risk conditions, operational needs, and available funding since the agency’s founding.
On a recent episode of METROspectives, METRO Magazine’s Executive Editor Alex Roman sat down with Ana-Maria Tomlinson, Director of Strategic & Cross-Sector Programs at the CSA Group, to explore a bold initiative aimed at addressing those challenges: the development of a National Code for Transit and Passenger Rail Systems in Canada.
Competitive FTA grants will support accessibility upgrades, family-friendly improvements, and cost-efficient capital projects at some of the nation’s oldest and busiest transit hubs.
The 3.92-mile addition will soon take riders west beyond its current Wilshire and Western station in Koreatown, continuing under Wilshire Boulevard through neighborhoods and communities including Hancock Park, Windsor Square, the Fairfax District, and Carthay Circle into Beverly Hills.
Under the plan, all long-distance routes will transition to a universal single-level fleet, replacing today’s mix of bi-level and single-level equipment.
