Railway Gazette International
December 2004: City News
ON OCTOBER 14 the Chicago Transit Board approved a $45·5m contract with the Aldridge-Mass joint venture to upgrade the signalling on CTA’s Brown Line and rehabilitate Clark Junction as part of its $530m capacity expansion project. This includes platform lengthening to accommodate eight-car trains on CTA’s third busiest route, now handling 42000 passengers/day (RG 5.04 p254).
New signalling will be installed between Kimball and Western stations, providing greater reliability and more operating flexibility. Aldridge-Mass will also install new crossing gates and controls at six level crossings and rehabilitate Kimball Tower. At Clark Junction, where the Brown, Purple and Red lines merge just north of Belmont station, the contractor will resignal the line between the Armitage and Addison stations, including 14 crossovers.
Work on the projects is expected to begin before the end of the year. Clark Junction is to be completed by late 2006 and the level crossing work between Kimball and Western should be finished by summer 2007. Funding will come from an FTA Full Funding Grant Agreement, the Regional Transportation Authority and Illinois Department of Transportation.
Railway Gazette International
December 2004: City News
IN A local ballot held as part of the US presidential elections on November 2, voters in Denver strongly endorsed a 12-year programme to develop the city’s urban rail networks at an estimated cost of $4·7bn.
Backed by 57% of voters in the eight-county Regional Transportation District, the FastTracks programme will finance three new light rail routes and three extensions of the existing system, plus three commuter rail lines, adding more than 190route-km of new rail corridors. Denver Mayor John Hickelooper said the vote reflected increasing urbanisation of the region, with over 600000 people moving into Denver since the late 1990s. FastTracks had been endorsed by more than 30 mayors in the region, despite opposition from Colorado’s state governor.
The new light rail lines would run west from Denver’s Union Station to Wheat Ridge and Golden, and north-south in the I-225 corridor. Diesel commuter rail lines would run north from Union Station to Boulder and Longmont, northeast to State Highway 7 & 160th, and east to Denver International Airport; this last might be electrified to connect with the I-225 light rail route.
The first of 34 Siemens SD160 LRVs being built for RTD’s TREX project was due to be shipped to Denver on November 15. The 30·7 km Southeast Corridor line along the I-25 and I-225 corridors is expected to open in December 2006.
On November 2 US voters approved a record number of mass transit ballot measures, approving 24 out of 31 transport initiatives. ‘The message is loud and clear - people want more public transportation’, said APTA President William W Millar the following day. ‘Voters clearly said that they deserve a better quality of life that available public transportation brings’.
Among the projects approved are a 51·5km commuter rail line between Austin and Leander in Texas, priced at $60m, and a $16bn regional transport plan in Phoenix, Arizona, that includes an additional 43·4km of light rail taking the network to 93·3km by 2025. Local sales tax increases to fund light rail expansion in Sacramento and San Diego, and a $362m package of light rail and commuter rail extensions in San Bernardino county, California, were also passed.
Railway Gazette International
December 2004: City News
VANCOUVER’s TransLink board of directors voted unanimously on October 15 to select light rail technology for the proposed Northeast route linking Coquitlam to the SkyTrain Millennium Line.
The cities of Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody had already endorsed light rail as preferable to SkyTrain, commuter rail or guided bus. SkyTrain was deemed too expensive, and guided buses were judged to be too risky. DMU commuter rail would attract low ridership and would have limited ability to shape development.
Serving nine stations, the light rail line is priced at C$800m. It would be built primarily at-grade along a segregated right-of-way. There would also be a short tunnel, and elevated sections to carry the line over busy road intersections. The line would be operated by a TransLink subsidiary.
The board is due to debate specific recommendations for a project development budget and implementation timescale this month. Preliminary engineering and utility relocation are to be completed by mid-2006, followed by the award of construction contracts and the ordering of rolling stock. Construction would be completed in mid-2009, allowing testing and commissioning ahead of opening later that year.
Railway Gazette International
December 2004: City News
THE START of the new German Railway timetable on December 12 will bring significant benefits for the residents of M.nchen, with the inauguration of the S-Bahn’s Takt 10 project.
According to the head of S-Bahn M.nchen GmbH Michael Wuth, it is the first time that one of DB’s S-Bahn networks has been completely restructured.
The process leading to introduction of 10 min interval services on the S-Bahn’s core routes began in December 1998, when DB signed a construction and financing agreement with the Land of Bayern. At that time, the total cost of the project was put at DM520m, including double-tracking the line to Deisenhofen, reconstruction at Ostbahnhof and upgrading of the line between Ostbahnhof and Pasing with LZB moving-block signalling to accommodate 30 trains each way per hour through the double-track cross-city tunnel.
Takt 10 requires a fleet of 234 trainsets, and the Land agreed to fund an extra 11 Class ET423 EMUs as part of a €180m contribution towards the cost of modernising the whole fleet, valued at €790m. Additional staff have also been recruited.
From December 12, 10min interval services will operate from the city centre as far as Maisach, Zorneding, Germering-Unterpfaffenhofen and Deisenhofen during the morning and evening peaks. All routes apart from S1, S8, S20 and S27 will be modified, with many of the eastern terminals being exchanged to ensure regular intervals on each route, simplify operations at Ostbahnhof and improve the flow through the central tunnel.
Railway Gazette International.
December 2004
AT LAST month’s conference marking the 40th anniversary of the Tokaido Shinkansen remarkably little emphasis was given to Japan’s high speed maglev development.
While trials continue at the Yamanashi test site, there are no plans to try and exceed the 581km/h achieved there on February 16. According to Dr Akio Seki, Senior Executive Director and Director General, General Technology Division, at JR Central, although faster speeds would be possible, this is the safety limit for back-up systems that would be needed were quenching, or loss of the magnetic field, to occur. If this were to happen, to prevent the vehicle striking the sidewalls of the guideway, side wheels that are normally retracted at high speed would come into play, but Seki said that at higher speeds there would be insufficient time to deploy the wheels before the risk of contact.
At the moment, future development of the scheme hinges on a report for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure &Transport due in March 2005 that is expected to confirm finally that the project is technically feasible. While this could form the basis for a go-ahead, the decision is essentially political and looks unlikely at the present time on cost grounds alone.
JR Central management and engineers at the conference were at pains to stress the development work progressing on the Tokaido Shinkansen, with activity at JR Central’s Komaki research centre geared primarily towards steel wheels and steel rails and to new technology that may be applied to the N700 design and any future successors. Researchers are working on superconducting materials that are effective at higher critical temperatures, but during a visit to Komaki after the conference this did not appear to be a major area of research.
Among other developments on display at Komaki was self-cleaning glass. According to Dr Akira Fujishima, Chairman of the Kanagawa Academy of Science & Technology, this makes use of a photocatalysis technique to coat glass with a ‘titania nanosheet’ that could be used to produce self-cleaning windows lasting for up to 10 years; this is being considered for trials on the N700 trainset. A photocatalytic air purifier that could be applied to smoking cars on Shinkansen trains is also envisaged.
Railway Gazette International
December 2004
CHINESE consultants have completed a feasibility study for construction of a 13·1km elevated metro line in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
The city authorities were due to submit the report to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai last month, seeking permission to start work next year. This would enable the line to open for revenue service in early 2008.
Running from Cat Linh street in Dong Da above the Hao Nam Canal and across Dong Da Lake, the line would serve the National University, and then follow Nguyen Trai Street to reach Ha Tay bus station; an extension to Xuan Mai is also envisaged. The initial route would have 13 stations, and is expected to carry 28000 passengers/day. Four-car trains operating at 80km/h would run at 2min headways at peak times.
Total cost of the project is put at US$300m, of which around 10% is allocated for land acquisition and clearance. A Chinese construction consortium is offering to fund up to 85% of the scheme through soft loans.
Railway Gazette International
December 2004
At 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 27, 1904, the youthful and newly elected mayor of New York City, George McClellan, emerged from the grand front door of City Hall to a cheering crowd of more than 20,000 New Yorkers. Bounding down the steps in a black-collared jacket and his ever-present black silk top hat, he stood out starkly beneath the hundreds of flags, red, white and blue ribbons and patriotic bunting that covered City Hall.
In his hand, McClellan held a silver motorman’s key presented to him by August Belmont in the Aldermanic Chamber just a few moments before. His destination — a cast-iron and glass Turkish-style kiosk that stood on one corner City Hall Park, a triangle of green adjoining City Hall and bordered by Broadway on the right and Park Row on the left.
New York was growing at an explosive rate. From 1840 to 1860, the population of Manhattan had soared from 300,000 to 800,000; twenty years later it stood at more than a million. On this October morning, Manhattan’s population stood just over twice that — half living south of 14th Street. The city had an established street railway system in place, and electric automobiles were beginning to make an appearance along “millionaire’s row” on Fifth Avenue, the majority of transportation prior was still horse-drawn.
As the mayor and his entourage made their way across the cobblestones to the entrance to the new subway, the crowd filling City Hall Park and its surrounding boulevards — youngsters perching in trees for a better look, businessmen and women leaning out of windows of the five-story brick buildings that surrounded the park — joined in the celebration, chanting a refrain first heard at this same spot in March only four years prior: “From City Hall to Harlem In Fifteen Minutes!”
New problems; New ideas
At the turn of the 20th century, no urban spot on Earth was as densely populated as southern Manhattan. Broadway, its main thoroughfare — even at 80 feet wide — was virtually immobilized under the massive crush of pedestrians, carriages, street cars and horsecars. The first traffic light was still 11 years away, and every intersection presented a prime opportunity for collisions, spooked horses and overturned drays.
New Yorkers had read about London’s electric subway, and, in 1900, the newspaper publishing houses clustered around City Hall — the New York Herald, the Sun and the Tribune among them — announced that New York would have one of its own. “From City Hall to Harlem in Fifteen Minutes,” the headlines trumpeted.
It was a welcome prospect.
With real-estate density pushing the shopping district north past Houston Street and into the Twenties — well beyond a comfortable walking distance — it was becoming difficult for less affluent New Yorkers, including the thousands of immigrants coming through the newly-opened Ellis Island, to access food and supplies. The promise of cheap, reliable transit to Houston and beyond gave birth to a mantra: “To Harlem in Fifteen Minutes …”
Elevated railroads had snaked through the city for more than 20 years. The Gilbert Elevated ran up Sixth Avenue to Central Park and over on the West Side, the Manhattan Elevated reached into the 150s. While the els ran some 50 trains an hour, their noise and monopoly of the streets rendered them less than ideal.
30 mph to the future
Mayor McClellan entered the kiosk and descended the steps into the City Hall subway station. Leading his entourage past the ornate vaulted atrium where sunlight streamed through stained-glass roof panels onto cream-colored terracotta tiles, McClellan impatiently posed for newspaper photographers before boarding the deep-red motorman’s car fronting the five-car train waiting at the platform.
When the cars were filled to capacity with aldermen and other dignitaries, McClellan took the motorman’s seat and inserted his key. The train lurched forward, rounded the station loop and barreled north on the express track at 30 mph.
With that, the official New York subway system was open to the public. But it wasn’t the first.
Onward and downward
Older spectators to the day’s events knew of another, secret New York subway whose station had stood just across Broadway from City Hall, only 80 feet away from the spot where Mayor McClellan and his committee had posed for the cameras.
Exactly 37 years earlier, on Oct. 27, 1867, the judges at the American Institute Fair awarded the publisher of Scientific American, a young inventor named Alfred Ely Beach, the “first premium prize” for his demonstration of a new kind of transportation device. Beach’s invention was essentially an oversized version of a pneumatic mail tube, 6 feet wide and more than a hundred feet long, suspended from the ceiling above the fair’s other exhibits. Through the tube traveled a 10-passenger car propelled by air pressure from a large stationary fan.
Encouraged by the public reaction, Beach made plans to expand his invention to help ease the traffic nightmare that plagued New York City. He faced oppressive opposition in the streetcar and omnibus companies who were hardly eager for the competition and from wealthy Broadway property owners, led by Alexander T. Stewart, who had already blocked a number of streetcar and el proposals.
Still, Beach had an plan.
On the southwest corner of Warren Street and Broadway stood Devlin’s Clothing Store, an unassuming white brick building directly facing City Hall. Beach proposed the building of two 54-inch-wide pneumatic tubes to deliver mail and packages to the new post office under construction just three blocks south on Broadway.
Beach took out a five-year lease on Devlin’s basement and a few months later quietly had the plan amended to specify the construction of a single 9-foot tube, through which, he said, two smaller tubes would be placed side-by-side.
For the better part of two months, Beach, English engineer Joseph Dixon and an eight-man crew tunneled east on Warren, then curved south, following Broadway for 250 feet. Their tools? Picks, shovels and a “shield” of their own invention — a piston-driven circular wood and iron wall that could bore through the dirt at a rate of about 8 feet per night. The curved stretch of the tunnel was then lined with iron, the straight portion under Broadway with brick, and an elegant entrance constructed beneath Devlin’s, featuring candelabras, a fountain and a grand piano to soothe passengers’ nerves.
Mirroring Beach’s original design, a cylindrical train car would be propelled by air pressure from a Roots blower — something along the lines of an intensely powerful 50-ton fan; when the car reached the tunnel’s dead-end, an electrical sensor would reverse the direction of the fan and draw the car back to the Warren Street station.
While the construction itself was openly discussed among New Yorkers, Beach kept the project’s purpose a secret until its completion on Saturday, Feb. 26, 1870. Then he hosted a grand reception for invited state and city officials, and members of the press.
Beach threw open the doors to the sidewalk entrance on March 1, giving the public its first look at the Pneumatic Transit System. It was an immediate hit, and for the next three years, a thousand people a day paid their 25 cents for the chance to see the tunnel and ride Beach’s subway from Warren Street to its terminus beneath Murray Street. During this time, Beach made four attempts to get the company charter to allow passenger service, enlisting the aide of William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, leader of Tammany Hall, the political stronghold that held the city in its grip, to twice introduce the bill to the Senate, until it passed in 1871, only to suffer veto at the hands of the governor. A second, vitriolic effort in 1872 met with the same fate.
Eventually New Yorkers grew bored of the demonstration line, but Beach kept it running until May of 1873, at which point he convinced Tweed’s successor to pass a long-sought legislative act allowing the construction of a full underground railroad. Upon achieving this faded triumph — for he had already realized that pneumatics were simply too unwieldy for a complicated, multi-passenger rail system — Beach closed the subway, rented out the tunnel to the National Rifle Depot for a shooting gallery, and the Pneumatic Transit System was largely forgotten — unless you count its brief resurface in Ghostbusters 2.
A series of stops and starts
Mayor McClellan was approaching the Canal Street station at 20 mph when he asked George Morrison, the chief motorman instructor, what would happen if he let go of the key. “The train will stop,” Morrison informed him. “It’s called a dead-man’s switch, to ensure that…”
McClellan let go of the key.
The train screeched to a halt, sending the dignitaries in the five cars hurtling. The lucky ones were able to grab the leather ceiling straps; the rest were sent sprawling onto the cars’ wooden floor. The mayor chuckled, turned the key, and sent the train speeding north again.
An engineering marvel that might have given Alfred Beach feelings of inferiority, the new four-track line ran north from City Hall Station along Park Avenue to 42nd Street at Grand Central. There it turned west to Times Square then headed up Broadway to the farms and villages in the northern reaches of Manhattan. At 96th Street, the subway split into two branches, one following Broadway to Van Cortlandt Park in the Western Bronx (today’s 1 line) and the other following Lenox Avenue and Southern Boulevard through Harlem, over the Harlem River, and terminating at Bronx Park in the Central Bronx (today’s 2 line). “Contract One,” as this plan was known, ran for 21 total miles.
Thirty-five-year-old William Barclay Parsons was the chief engineer for the project. One of his first decisions was that the subway tunneling should be accomplished not exclusively underground, as Beach had done, but by open-trench tunneling, or “cut-and-cover” — exactly the sort of disruption A.T. Stewart had feared. Streets would be torn up and a trench dug down to the level of the planned subway, much of it accomplished by shovel and pickaxe. Once the trench reached 15 to 20 feet, the tunnel would be built and enclosed, and the trench backfilled.
That was the plan, anyway. Predictably, New York had other ideas.
Parsons found himself with two battles to fight. Although Tweed himself was, by this time, long gone, New York was still in the grasp of Tammany Hall. Politicians fought over the plan for years while Parsons watched despondently as other cities — Boston, Paris, Glasgow, even Budapest — opened their own subway systems. It took five years until the subway plan was approved, and construction finally began in March of 1900, when Mayor Robert Van Wyck used a silver Tiffany-crafted spade to ceremoniously pitch the first shovelful of dirt in City Hall Park.
The trench was dug along Park Avenue beginning at City Hall — advantageously north of the more densely-populated areas south of Wall Street — and proceeded smoothly until it reached 27th Street. There, Parsons came up against the second, equally imposing problem, this time, geological in nature.
Manhattan lies on an outcropping of extremely hard bedrock known as “Manhattan schist.” It was, in fact, this schist that would shortly permit the construction of the city’s landmark skyscrapers. [Today, the location of the two largest outcroppings — south of City Hall near Wall Street and in midtown — can be easily detected by noting the height of the buildings in the city’s profile.]
Murray Hill, the 15-block-long stretch of schist that ran north to 42nd Street, became the first of two stretches of the line for which rock-tunneling became necessary. The other, a daunting, two-mile tunnel beginning at 158th Street, attracted miners from the Pennsylvania coal hills, Colorado’s silver lode, the Klondike and locales as far away as Sweden — all for a salary of $3.75 a day.
In rock-tunneling, a vertical shaft was sunk at both ends of the tunnel. From the bottom of each shaft, holes were drilled 7 feet in the desired direction of the tunnel and dynamite was inserted and detonated. When the rubble was cleared, the resulting cavity was shored up by timbers. The two tunnel ends advanced through the schist until they met in the middle, where the laborers enlarged the tube to its full size, lined it with concrete and lay the track.
Once the project punched through the Murray Hill outcropping and the work reached Grand Central, the dreaded cut-and-cover construction resumed, creating a public outcry over the dangerous open trenches. Barricades were not yet in use and horses had difficulty negotiating around the work. In response, wooden bridges were constructed over the open trenches to permit traffic flow, and on occasion, whole blocks were completely closed to traffic.
Further north, at 125th Street, the “Manhattan Valley” made it favorable to run the subway above ground. A half-mile-long viaduct was built, scaling heights of 168 feet before the valley’s far side was reached and the trains plunged underground again. The topography was so uneven that, only 25 blocks later, the tunnel reached depths so great that deep-bore tunneling was used, and elevators — not yet common in New York — were necessary in order for passengers to reach the stations. The 191st Street station, at 160 feet below surface, is in fact the subway system’s deepest, and a far cry from the 20-foot levels that Parsons had intended.
Give or take a few …
96th Street marked the traditional border of Harlem, and as the train passed over the line switch with McClellan still at the controls, the top-hatted passengers checked their pocket watches: It was 2:52 p.m., barely 17 minutes after they had left the City Hall station. At 103rd and Broadway, the mayor finally turned the car over to motor instrcutor George L. Morrison.
From City Hall to Harlem. They’d done it.
Minute 18 and beyond …
More than 100,000,000 passengers rode the Interborough Rapid Transit Subway (IRT) in its first year alone. The new subway afforded unprecedented access beyond the downtown area, and Manhattan began a rapid transformation: the built-up business district south of City Hall tripled in size within three years, and the sparsely populated regions of northern Manhattan and the Bronx experienced a population boom unlike anything seen outside of the Gold Rush.
In 1910, on the success of the IRT and its explosive effect on New York City’s growth, the city began taking bids on the system’s largest expansion, one that would double the system’s coverage. As the proposals came in — one from the IRT and the other from the hodgepodge of surface railroads that was known across the river as the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (later the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company, or BMT) — a union was proposed between the two systems that would draw from the best features of each. The “Dual Contract” was born.
The subway helped New York become the dominant city on the East Coast, and 1907 alone brought more than a million immigrants through Ellis Island, with most settling in the Lower East Side. To help alleviate overcrowding and spread the population into other boroughs, another spur of the IRT would be built from Grand Central, passing under the East River via the old Steinway Tunnels that were built in 1907 for trolley cars but never used, and joining up with BRT trains at Queens Plaza.
A third subway line, the IND (for “Independent,” identifiable today by the lettered lines, A-B-C-D-E in Manhattan) began construction in 1925 as a competitor to the IRT and BRT. It opened to the public seven years later. Heralded in popular culture as “the people’s subway,” the ‘A’ Train linked Harlem with the fast-growing Stuyvesant Heights (now Bedford-Stuyvesant); within a year of the line’s opening Bed-Stuy became New York’s largest black community, a distinction it still holds today.
The Christmastime opening of the B and D lines along Sixth Avenue were greeted at Radio City Music Hall with a jubilant “No El, No El!” The now-redundant Sixth Avenue El had been torn down, flooding the avenue with sunlight it had not enjoyed in decades. The demolition of the city’s remaining els followed, with the last – the fabled Third Avenue el – torn down in 1956.
The three subway lines were unified into the New York Transit System in 1940, though today the distinctions between the lines are blurred in the eyes of most New Yorkers. Still, a key engineering fact will always keep them separate: the trains of BMT and IND lines are longer and wider than those of IRT lines, and the tunnels and platforms were built accordingly. BMT and IND cars cannot fit through the IRT’s tunnels, and an IRT train would leave too large a platform gap at a BMT/IND station.
From Mayor Van Wyck’s ceremony in City Hall Park to the completion of the Sixth Avenue line, the New York City subway system was built in the span of only 40 years — a remarkable achievement by any standard. Yet, as the transportation needs of New York City grow, so must its subway system.
Although a Second Avenue line had been proposed as far back as 1920, when plans were eventually scuttled by the 1929 Wall Street crash, work on the line finally began in 1972. Twenty blocks of tunnel were dug before the city’s 1976 financial crisis shut the project down. The three tunnel sections were covered over, becoming a sort of time capsule sealed with the hope of revival by some future generation.
The project was resurrected for a third time in 1995, when the Manhattan East Side Alternatives (MESA) Study proposed a line running from 125th St .south to the South Street Seaport and Hanover Square.
Phase One of this new line, from 105th Street to 62nd Street, is scheduled to get underway this winter. The joint venture DMJM+HARRIS*Arup will undertake preliminary engineering of the 8.5 miles of tunnels and 16 stations of the estimated $17 billion project and support NYCT’s EIS consultant, providing engineering input for the environmental process.
When construction begins, it will be the first underground expansion of the mythic NYC subway system in more than 70 years.
Los Angeles Times
December 4, 2004
Each day, 400,000 motorists form a snaking red ribbon of brake lights along the Santa Monica Freeway. Yet even as this freeway, one of the nation’s busiest, grew steadily more clogged in recent decades, uninterested politicians and a knot of vocal opponents kept a planned light-rail line between Santa Monica and downtown on ice. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is finally poised to give a green light to the first 9.6-mile stretch of what’s called the Exposition Boulevard line. That action could get trains rolling in 2010, four years ahead of schedule - and not a moment too soon.
The MTA, sometimes partnering with other transit agencies, has built rail or subway links to nearly every region in the county in recent years, but not the Westside. The biggest losers have been thousands of working people from Boyle Heights or Compton who travel west every day to jobs. But Westside commuters also have suffered.
Years of dogged lobbying by local rail advocates and city officials are finally paying off. The MTA has put aside the local, state and federal dollars needed to cover the $490-million tab. If the agency’s board signs off on the project’s environmental review next month as expected, bulldozers should be moving dirt by 2007.
Original plans called for a 17-mile line to Santa Monica mostly along Exposition Boulevard. Years ago, the MTA bought up the right of way, an old Red Car route. But fierce resistance from some Cheviot Hills homeowners who feared the trains would bring noise and crime stalled the project.
Now, a first phase will run south from the MTA’s transit hub at 7th and Figueroa streets to Exposition, then west to Robertson Boulevard in Culver City. At stops along the way, riders will be able to transfer to existing bus lines, and expanded parking facilities are in the works. For the estimated 45,000 daily riders, the trip time of 27 minutes will be faster and far more pleasant than the freeway’s creep and crawl or lurching street buses.
MTA planners say they have learned from problems that surfaced when the Pasadena Gold Line opened in 2003, including noisy trains and fears for pedestrian safety. The Exposition right of way is wider than that of the Gold Line, naturally buffering some train noise and vibrations. Also, the Westside route is straighter, meaning fewer metal-screeching turns. Finally, the trains will carry new, softer bells and benefit from better- designed grade crossings.
Support for the project’s second phase to Santa Monica probably will ride on the success of these technical improvements and on Westside leaders who realize that riding the rails to work is not so wild a notion.
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
December 4, 2004
The chance to live near public transport services can attract buyers or tenants — but not always. JO ROGERS reports
It’s one of those ambiguous real estate phrases that can hide a multitude of sins. “Close to transport” can refer to a quiet house three blocks back from the train station or a thin-walled house facing a six-lane highway.
But how close is too close for buyers and renters and when are they willing to fork out extra cash for the convenience of easy transport? Maggie Hazzouri, property manager at The Regional Professionals Meadowbank, says proximity to public transport is not always the drawcard some people assume.
She gives the example of numerous new waterfront developments built near the water and ferry stop at Meadowbank in recent years. According to the timetable, the ferry should have commuters in the CBD in about 30 minutes but Hazzouri says no one seems interested.
“The ferry is there but a lot of people. don’t care,” she says. “They go to work in the morning and they just want something that’s going to be fast, which means being near Meadowbank or West Ryde [train] stations.”
“A lot of people who bought down by the water were told by developers that they would be getting anywhere between $500 and $600 on rentals a week. Now what they’ve found is unfortunately they aren’t getting anywhere near that. They are getting between $300 and $400, which is the same as brand-new properties in West Ryde, and they aren’t on the water.”
Hazzouri says the two most popular streets in Meadowbank, Bank St and Meadow Crescent, are both extremely close to the train station. “Properties in Ryde do not lease out as fast as properties in West Ryde do because a lot of people want to be near the station, which is in West Ryde,” she says. “They also use buses, but people prefer the train.”
Chris Reynolds, sales manager at LJ Hooker Chatswood, has also discovered that proximity to a train station sells property. “I think it’s an absolute drawcard to be close to the train,” he says. “There may not necessarily be a difference in price between two similar units but the ones that are closer to the station will have a better chance of renting.”
Reynolds says investors love to buy close to Chatswood’s train station and bus interchange. “In Chatswood you get lots of high-rises, all walking distance from the station, and they’re popular with a lot of students who come out here from other countries, don’t have a car, don’t know the area that well, and want to be close to shops and transport,” he says.
Reynolds has also noticed one-car families like to be close to a train station so that it is easier for their children to get to school or go out.
However, he says there is a market of buyers who are happy to rely on cars and buses and house-hunt in quieter suburbs further away from the train line — and prices in these areas aren’t affected by the lack of transport. “Generally, properties closer to transport are easier to rent and sell, although if you’re right on the Pacific Highway with a bus stop right out the front, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be an ideal property because there are other factors pulling it back.”
Big roads are not all bad in the property world, though.
John Pierobon, in the sales division at Elders Real Estate Liverpool, says the opening of the M5 East motorway was a boon for his clients. With much of Liverpool badly served by public transport, he says local residents rely heavily on their cars and the M5 East link connecting Liverpool with the airport has pushed up house and unit prices. “I think that as part of the package offered in Liverpool, the M5 has affected the area in a really positive way, and I think it’s going to be even better once this orbital [road] comes through,” he says.
But Pierobon, like other agents, says proximity to a train station has a more direct effect on property movement than any other transport factor. “There’s a lot of newer units that have been built in the CBD area and they’re reliant on trains,” he says. “Anything within a short walk of the station is always very easy to lease. A lot of the time with property in Liverpool people’s first question is ‘How long does it take to walk to the station?”’
While transport can affect property sales and rentals, it is not necessarily the overriding factor in all suburbs. Nick Panovski, sales manager at Ray White Maroubra, says most people buy and rent in his suburb for the beach culture.
He doesn’t see its proximity to the airport or express bus services into the city as being particular selling points. “Transport isn’t the reason people buy in Maroubra,” he says. “It’s more to do with the new shopping being here, and the beach. “If professionals want to get to the city, or students want to get to the university, the buses are there but it’s not a selling point.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
December 5, 2004
Eager passengers crowded trains Saturday as the metro area’s first light-rail line debuted its final 4 miles of track into Bloomington. To celebrate the finished $715 million project, bus and rail rides were free.
Rail cars on the Hiawatha line were packed with people eager to go through the rail tunnel under the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to the south end of the line — the Mall of America.
Some explored the underground Lindbergh Terminal station at the airport, but the mall was the most popular destination. Riders of all ages streamed off the trains into the mall’s ground-level transit station and up an escalator to the east entrance.
Metro Transit expected ridership to build through the day because of several attractions in downtown Minneapolis, including the evening Holidazzle parade on the Nicollet Mall.
To mark the line’s completion, officials gave speeches at a ceremony at the Bloomington Central station. Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell said the line is the product of a quarter-century of dreaming, debate and determined planning. “Ridership is nearly 100 percent higher than what we anticipated and projected,” he said.
Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, who also serves as the state’s transportation commissioner, said the opening of the line before the end-of-the-year deadline “is a nice holiday present” for shoppers and air travelers. She noted that “the project was delivered on budget and ahead of schedule.”
Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, who played a key role in getting the rail line built, recited a humorous list of top reasons he is glad to have it, including: “I always wanted to go the Mall of America for lunch.” And he jabbed at rail opponents, saying strong early ridership suggests the state may need a new “geography grad standard for people who think this is the train to nowhere,” referring to Minnesota’s new graduation requirements.
Happy riders
The rail opening drew riders from many communities. Barb Wessel of Eagan got on board to practice the new commuting drill she will start Monday. She parked at the 28th Avenue station in Bloomington and rode the train to the Nicollet Mall. “I think it’s fantastic,” she said.
John and Carol Quinn of St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood said they thought it was about time for light rail. “I think we’re about 20 years behind,” John said.
Dan and Sally Warden of Minneapolis waited for the line to be completed to the mall before they took a trip. “We liked it a lot,” Sally said. “We wish you could go more places on it.”
Anita Kennison of Columbia Heights took a bus from northeast Minneapolis to connect with the train downtown. She found it “very smooth and very easy to do. I’ll be taking it to the airport and Mall of America.”
Paul Evers of Minneapolis noted that he got on at 11:15 a.m. at the Warehouse District station and didn’t reach the mall until 55 minutes later. The trip is supposed to take about 36 minutes, but was slowed by a problem with a train ahead of his. Metro Transit said a passenger got sick on the train, which was taken out of service for cleaning.
Kevin Rodriguez of San Diego, a city often cited for its thriving light-rail line, gave the Hiawatha a thumbs-up. Rodriguez, who was in town to visit his father, said, “We’re very impressed with it.”
Timothy Lisson of St. Paul, an airport security checkpoint worker, rode on his day off to try the new connection between the Lindbergh and Humphrey terminals. “I’m done with the shuttle bus,” he said. He starts work at 3:45 a.m. and plans to hop the train at 3:19 a.m. to go between the airport’s terminals. “It’s a much more pleasant ride,” he said. “The station is exciting and futuristic. I look forward to the opening of an extension to St. Paul.”
But Sydne Phouapradit of Rockford, who works at the United Airlines ticket counter, said she will miss the shuttle bus. It ran more frequently and took her directly to her parking area near the Humphrey terminal, she said.
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
December 5, 2004
Place: First South and Main.
Time: Noon.
The streets of Salt Lake City are a mix of motorists and pedestrians, people on their way to lunch or an appointment.
One woman pauses at the edge of the sidewalk, glances one way, then rushes across the street and over the tracks to catch a southbound train. Another person quickly follows her lead.
It’s a scene that lasted all of 20 seconds, but each day it’s repeated time and again, according to reports from Utah’s nearly 50 light-rail operators. There are a lot of close calls, said Sheldon Zimmerman, who recently completed a six-week driver training course with the Utah Transit Authority. His first time out on the tracks, four raccoons got squashed by the train and a motorist made an illegal U-turn in front of him. “There’s no such thing as fear in this business,” said Zimmerman. “Sure damn terror? Yes.”
While difficult to compare accident statistics because of a lack of scientifically based reporting guidelines, it’s clear that most transit agencies in the West have a problem with inattentive motorists and pedestrians.
Utah is no exception.
While six fatal accidents and two suicides have occurred along the TRAX line, there have been 87 major and minor “incidents” since the white trains with the red and blue stripes began running five years ago. They range from fender-benders to train-derailing collisions. But these are only the accidents that cause a minimum of $ 7,500 in damage.
Portland, Ore., which counts incidents regardless of cost, had a total of 268 collisions from 1999 to 2004 along its 44-mile light-rail line. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit District reported 101 light-rail accidents — eight involving pedestrians, 93 involving motor vehicles. “I think we’re doing fairly well for a system this size,” said Morgan Lyons, spokesman for the Dallas transit agency. “We have been really aggressive with our safety messages with all ages.”
Over the past six years, Dallas has experienced seven fatalities along its 45-mile rail line. Three involved pedestrians, while four were motorists who either drove through — or around — railway crossing arms and into an oncoming train.
In Denver, six fatalities and 134 collisions have occurred along its 29-mile line over the past six years. Sacramento has had 14 fatalities and 124 collisions, while Portland experienced 12 fatalities.
Problem areas: Without question, downtown Salt Lake City is the biggest concern for UTA TRAX operators.
Distractions are everywhere: catchy shop signs, the glare of the sun off passing vehicles and distracted pedestrians who run across the tracks.
Also, the rail lines are level with the street. In some areas — particularly along Main Street, the University of Utah extension and the area around 800 South — no curb separates the rail from the road. “You’ve got to be focused on what’s out there all the time,” said train operator Ard Howell. “When you sit back in your seat in Sandy, you have 38 minutes to go downtown. You’ve got to give it your undivided attention.”
Since its opening in 1999, six motorists have hit the TRAX train while making illegal left turns at 800 South and 900 South, while five have hit the train broadside in the same area. Along Main Street, pedestrian activity is a problem, where anywhere from 60 to 100 people are estimated to jaywalk across the tracks each hour.
Mary Fetsch with the Portland Metropolitan Area Express says speed may be a factor — especially considering the number of fatalities in downtown Salt Lake City. “People are going to be doing a hundred different things while they’re walking down the street, “ she said. “The speed makes a difference. It’s a lot harder to stop at 35 mph.”
In Portland, no fatalities have occurred downtown, where the trains run at only 15 mph — 20 mph slower than in Utah.
John Inglish, chief executive for UTA, insists the higher speeds downtown don’t matter. “If the train is going 5 miles per hour or even 20, the result to some extent is going to be the same,” he said. “People not paying attention and turning left in front of a train are the problem.”
Statistics gathered from UTA show that more than two-thirds of the accidents along the University line have involved motorists making illegal left-hand turns. Two pedestrian fatalities have occurred in the area, including one this October that killed 38-year-old Starla Rae Bradbury, who slipped and fell under the train.
But speed does play a factor in the corridor running from 10000 South in Sandy to 800 South in Salt Lake City. Here, almost a dozen accidents have occurred at “grade crossings,” or where the roadway and the rail line intersect. Two suicides have also occurred in this area, along with UTA’s only fatality involving a motorist.
Ed Buchanan, UTA safety administrator, is at a loss to explain all the accidents. “There’s only so much we can do,” he said. “You can go to a certain point and there’s a responsibility that pedestrians and drivers have to have from their side.”
Problem solving: Each time an accident occurs along TRAX, transit officials and train drivers are required to follow a strict set of safety guidelines. The incident is reported, policing agencies are called if necessary, and policies are reviewed.
For example, all but one of the four accidents that occurred in late October have involved a motorist making an illegal left-hand turn. For the past month, Buchanan and other UTA officials have been reviewing the University line around 900 East for potential shortcomings in warning signage and roadway signals.
Operator response is also evaluated — regardless of how small the incident is.
Weather most likely caused October’s rash of collisions. Wet, slippery conditions and low visibility posed safety problems on many days. In the case of Bradbury, the train operator was unable to see her from his rearview mirror. She had approached from the wrong side and was trying to board one of the last cars along the four-car train.
Train operators say it’s difficult to see all the way back along a four-car train — and there are countless other distractions in front of them. It’s also difficult to stop once they’ve pushed the train into motion. “A train doesn’t stop on a dime,” explained Lyons, the spokesman for the Dallas light-rail system. “It takes time for the train to stop. Ours are 107,000 pounds. That’s a lot of mass moving at a good clip.”
Pedestrians and motorists: For the past few months, UTA officials have been meeting with representatives from Salt Lake City to discuss future improvements to downtown transit.
Safety is a top concern. But it’s impossible to fence in every portion of the light rail line or abolish every left-hand turn. Pedestrians and motorists must step up and not play chicken with the TRAX trains. “Safety is our No. 1 priority,” said Inglish. “But at some point, it becomes difficult to prevent accidents. Many are just acts of extremely poor judgment and I don’t know how to prevent that.”
Seven rules to live by:
* 1. Don’t make a left turn over the tracks unless your traffic signal is green.
* 2. Enter the train from the platform, not the street.
* 3. Don’t play chicken with the train — you’ll lose every time.
* 4. Stand behind the yellow line drawn along the edge of the train platform.
* 5. If you have to run to catch it, it’s not your train.
* 6. Don’t jaywalk.
* 7. Rail lines are not right-of-ways.
Houston Chronicle
Dec. 5, 2004
DALLAS - The latest piece of Dallas’ light rail system opened last month, providing sports fans and concert-goers service to the American Airlines Center.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit renovated Victory Station at the arena to accommodate light rail trains in addition to Trinity Railway Express commuter trains, which already had served American Airlines Center during events. DART built the 1.2-mile light-rail extension from the West End to the arena. It cost $79 million.
The San Francisco Chronicle
DECEMBER 6, 2004
WHEN IT COMES to public transportation in San Francisco, a lot of people have missed the bus, which would explain why there was a long period when it was faster to drive to the city from Livermore than to ride downtown from Ocean Beach on a bus or streetcar.
For years, the Municipal Railway system was neglected and underfunded, resulting in one of the Bay Area’s most memorable (non-sporting) meltdowns. Muni’s bad old days are mostly a memory, but the ride is still occasionally bumpy, what with huge budget deficits and a lot of zeroes at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. How else to characterize suggestions over the years to make Muni a free ride? Should we pass the hat to cover the agency’s proposed $475 million annual budget?
Such pesky little details are at the heart of the latest battle at Muni, whose chief, Michael Burns, is now proposing a round of service cuts and revenue additions such as parking-garage-fee-and-fare increases to keep San Francisco’s people-movers running on time. In a city where at least one-third of the residents will oppose anything, selling reality is never an easy job.
Burns is expected to ask his transit agency’s board to declare a fiscal emergency this week to avoid a lengthy and costly environmental review and cut straight to Muni’s pressing financial problems. The agency’s $10 million to $20 million projected budget deficit is likely to be at the center of most of the upcoming budget battles between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors — because, for hundreds of thousands of riders, Muni is literally where local government service meets the road.
This tiff is hardly unexpected. San Francisco voters gave a thumbs-down to two business-tax proposals last month that would have made up for shrinking city revenues, leaving the city no choice but to trim spending. Now the blame game has begun — ever-uncivil Supervisor Chris Daly blamed the problem on Newsom’s “stupid politics” last week — an apparent reference to the mayor’s attempt to pass taxes to pay for those many city services Daly holds so dear. Daly, who was apoplectic about a proposal to cut a relative paltry $10 million from the Department of Public Health’s $1 billion budget, had previously proposed rejecting the transit agency’s entire budget.
Not to be outdone, Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval has come up with the great idea to cut funding for the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development — two of the few areas where San Francisco could actually generate money to cover its fiscal sinkhole. Sandoval is one of the supervisors who supported a ballot measure aimed at stopping the city from getting millions for the corporate naming rights to Candlestick Park.
Fumbling money away may seem a quaint civic tradition, but fiscal cherry-picking isn’t going to help Muni, which carries 700,000 people a day in a relatively timely fashion. Muni’s resurgence — longtime riders might call it Muni’s resurrection — is a direct result of a healthy increase in funding. Last year, the agency got its first fare increase in more than a decade and there was hardly any grumbling, because the $1.25 fee still puts Muni among the most inexpensive transit lines in the nation. If that fare rises another 25 cents, it would still put San Francisco in the middle of the municipal pack. But it is certain to cause some protests because the budget deficit is so large that any fare hike will be by necessity packaged with service cuts.
The true weight of the budget mess is sure to be felt by many in the next few months, especially as supervisors look to protect their pet projects and redirect funds from others’they find less desirable. Sandoval has made it his mission to try to nip the city’s tourism industry in the bud — and why not, since those darn free-spending visitors don’t vote here. Daly has decided to go to bat for the mental-health clinics, and given his public behavior, that may make sense.
“Stupid politics,” which have come to characterize San Francisco as much as cable cars and hilltop hotels, are about to play out at board hearings and government access television channels. They may not come with consumer warnings, but seat belts would be advisable.
Business Wire
December 6, 2004
ING DIRECT is giving all Washington, D.C. commuters who take the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) Metrorail and Metrobuses a free ride as part of its “Metro and Save” event on December 16th. All 84 Metrorail lines and Metrobus fareboxes will turn “orange”, in honor of ING DIRECT’s corporate color, from 5 am to 9:30 am and all commuters will ride free of charge courtesy of ING DIRECT.
“ING DIRECT wants to help people save their money with the Orange Savings Account, which pays the nation’s highest yield with no fees or minimums,” said Arkadi Kuhlmann, President and CEO, ING DIRECT. “With no minimum balance requirements or service charges, the Orange Savings Account is a product for anyone looking for good value when it comes to savings. We want to reach as many commuters as possible with that message.”
Instead of spending their money on transportation the morning of the 16th, ING DIRECT hopes that commuters will have a few extra dollars to put to work in an Orange Savings Account from America’s fastest growing bank, which also offers the Orange Mortgage featuring a lowest rate promise and guaranteed closing costs. Since ING DIRECT operates online and over the phone instead of through traditional bank branches, the company has low overhead and is able to pass its cost savings on to customers in the form of great rates.
About ING DIRECT:
Headquartered in Wilmington, Del. with offices in St. Cloud, Minn. and Los Angeles, Calif., ING DIRECT is the operating name of ING Bank, fsb (Member FDIC), a federally chartered savings bank offering the Orange Savings Account, the nation’s highest yield with no minimums and no fees, and other simple financial products including the Orange Mortgage to lead Americans back to saving.
The Evening Standard (London)
December 6, 2004
In the first of a new weekly column, writer Andrew Gilligan reports on the London commuter line that is cursed by success HERE is a warning to readers. During the course of this article, the Evening Standard is going to be nice about a London commuter rail company. You may want to make sure you are sitting down before you continue (unless you are on a London commuter train, of course, in which case hanging on to one of those yellow stainless-steel poles will probably have to do).
And it’s not just any old train company we’re going to praise, either, not one of those shiny, easy-to-run ones like Chiltern, complete with all-new trains, modernised signalling and upmarket customers who never scratch their girlfriends’ names on the windows. No, this company, South Eastern Trains, operates out of Charing Cross, Cannon Street and London Bridge to south-east London and Kent - the busiest services in Britain, over some of the country’s most overcrowded and inadequate lines, often using 45-year-old rollingstock that should have been melted down for saucepans decades ago.
In the days when the service was run by the French company Connex, it became a byword for dreadfulness. My own area, Greenwich, would on some days find itself entirely cut off from central London. People would swap horror stories at dinner parties.
Remember the day the train got stuck 10 metres outside London Bridge but they wouldn’t let anyone off for fouranda-half hours? Or the day the staff at Westcombe Park locked up and went home, leaving passengers off the last train to crawl out through a gap in the fence?
Or, my own personal favourite, the day all the trains were late because the sun was shining? (This was memorably described by a Connex platform announcer as “adverse weather conditions”. Apparently, bright sunshine warps the rails, or something.) Last autumn, with on-time performance down to 79.6 per cent, Connex was finally sacked - although for financial incompetence rather than any other kind. For the past 13 months, the South Eastern franchise has been run directly by the Government, making it the first part of the railway to be effectively renationalised.
Only two of Connex’s seven-strong management team have kept their jobs. In a daring break with much privatised railway practice, the new, stateowned South Eastern Trains has installed a number of top managers who appear actually to know something about how to run a train service - such as the managing director, Michael Holden, a 30-year British Rail veteran.
And the service, although still very far from perfect, does indeed appear to have improved. According to the latest punctuality statistics, 86.5 per cent of South Eastern trains were on time, while over the same period the performance of other south-of-the-river operators fell. Most impressively, passenger complaints have crashed by a third, from 23,800 in the last year of Connex to 16,700 in the first year of South Eastern. (There were also, the company adds bravely, 370 compliments.) James Abbott, editor of the leading industry magazine, Modern Railways, lives in Tunbridge Wells, in South Eastern territory - and his wife, Deborah, commutes daily into the City.
“She holds me personally responsible for the state of the service,” he says. “It got so bad under Connex that she was talking about jacking in her job. I can tell you now that the bollocking index is down.”
Abbott says one of the most important changes Holden has wrought is improving staff morale. “If you’ve got everybody on your side when things start going wrong, it’s easier to get out of it,” he says. “But if they don’t give a monkeys, you’re stuffed. The French were famous for not using the staff canteen because they didn’t like English cooking, so they never knew what the grassroots feeling was. A lot of it really is detailed stuff - like the platform staff at London Bridge getting the doors closed and the trains away on time. If they’re motivated to do that, you can keep the timetable running, but if there’s sloppy station work it knocks in to the whole service.”
SOUTH Eastern has also corrected some of privatisation’s more ludicrous inefficiencies. Until this year, its control room ran the trains in one central-London building, Network Rail’s control room ran the tracks in another one - and, in an extra loony touch, the people who ran the announcements and TV monitors designed to tell the passengers what was going on were in yet a third control room, 15 miles down the line in Orpington.
They are now all together in the same room, so they no longer have to email each other to find out what is happening.
For the battle-scarred passengers on the 17.49 to Tunbridge Wells last Friday, there have been too many false dawns, too many new liveries, too many PR promises to be entirely uncynical about the latest attempt to reinvent the railway wheel. About half said they had not noticed any change.
But the others were more enthusiastic.
“It’s not perfect, but it was absolutely atrocious before,” said David Dixon, who pays £2,400 a year to travel from Paddock Wood. “ Things have improved,” said Peter Ward, from Sevenoaks. “They’ve clearly got some management skills in place. It’s interesting how with the same infrastructure a new management can make a difference.”
Thousands of commuters have sent postcards calling for South Eastern to stay in public hands - as have nearly 100 Labour MPs, led by Eltham’s Clive Efford, who commutes to Parliament on the company’s trains. “The great thing now is that they are only serving one master, the passenger, instead of having to serve shareholders as well,” says Efford. The RMT’s Bob Crow says it would be “madness” to hand South Eastern back to some hopeless bus company.
With so little to show for the fortunes it has poured into the rail network, you might think the Government would pounce on a success story like this. That, unfortunately, would be to misunderstand the politics of New Labour.
Still committed to the publicprivate mishmash that it has made of the rail network, the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, clearly regards the success of a state-owned rail company as an embarrassment. “It is not immediately obvious to me that things are materially better,” he told the Commons last month, in an answer he rather humiliatingly had to correct this month.
Most interestingly of all, South Eastern’s managers themselves have been banned from talking about their success. The Standard contacted the company for an interview with Mr Holden and access to the operations centre.
South Eastern was initially keen to help, but then apologetically came back and said neither Mr Holden, nor any other facilities, would be available, by order of the Strategic Rail Authority. “It is frustrating,” admitted Sarah Boundy, the company’s spokeswoman. “I almost think, why bother to employ me if they don’t want any good press.”
From the industry that gave you the wrong kind of snow - we clearly now have the wrong kind of success.
The Oregonian - Portland
December 7, 2004
Two transportation studies, independent of each other but covering some of the same turf, could generate major changes on Portland’s central east side.
Portland Streetcar Inc. and Metro are pressing ahead with groundwork for a federal grant application for a streetcar line that would run between the Broadway Bridge and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
A study commissioned by the Lloyd District Transportation Management Association will see whether a bridge over Interstate 84 at Northeast Seventh Avenue makes sense for stimulating development in the Lloyd District.
Proponents of both studies, however, are concerned that eastside residents and businesses might think the two studies are aimed at moving the streetcar from the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard-Grand Avenue couplet to Southeast Seventh Avenue.
“People are wary that that is our intent,” said Rick Williams, executive director of the Lloyd District association. “That’s not the intent at all.” Williams said the association, which strives to improve non-auto access to and from the district, supports the proposed MLK-Grand streetcar route.
Rick Gustafson, president of the nonprofit streetcar company, said streetcar advocates are committed to the route approved last year by the Portland City Council and Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.
That route would cross the Broadway Bridge, head east on Weidler Street, turn south on Seventh to Northeast Oregon Street and then turn west on MLK and south to OMSI. Tracks would loop back north on Grand Avenue, mostly retracing the path to the Broadway Bridge.
Zoning a concern
The underlying concern is zoning. Many central eastside property and business owners don’t want to jeopardize industrial sanctuary zoning that covers much of the east side between Southeast Sixth and 12th avenues.
By its nature, a streetcar is intended to serve dense urban areas with mixed housing and commercial uses. The Pearl District is the streetcar’s prime model, where backers say the streetcar helped stimulate more than $2 billion in urban development. “We’re committed to working with the existing zoning on Grand and MLK,” Gustafson said. Zoning along that couplet would allow a mixture of high- density residential, office and commercial uses.
Unlike the Pearl, the central east side doesn’t offer dozens of vacant acres. “We are not trying to duplicate the Pearl,” said Mike Bolliger, who serves on the streetcar advisory committee and the Central Eastside Industrial Council. “We want to keep our own identity.”
Development opportunities on King and Grand are essential to arriving at a streetcar financing package. Though supporters hope to win federal funding for half of the estimated $85 million project, a substantial portion would be billed to property owners along the route.
Susan Lindsay, chairwoman of the Buckman Community Association, said the MLK-Grand Avenue loop makes the most sense for stimulating growth. “A number of properties could be bought up on those streets and redeveloped,” she said.
Some of Portland’s former industrial enclaves have withered or disappeared, but the central east side remains a vibrant employment district. It may be in for a substantial boost with the proposed mixed-use Burnside Bridgehead Development being considered by the Portland Development Commission. “While the economy is still pretty soft, we’re seeing quite a bit of build-out on the east side,” Bolliger said.
The Seventh Avenue bridge proposal will be analyzed by Kittelson & Associates, a Portland traffic engineering and transportation planning firm. Williams said a key element of the study is to learn whether a bridge would stimulate development in the vicinity of Northeast Multnomah Street and Seventh. Earlier studies suggested that surface parking lots could become the heart of a revitalized Lloyd District.
Lindsay said nearby neighborhoods have not been asked to participate in the bridge study. She said bicycle and pedestrian access should be included in any bridge plan.
Congress holds purse strings
The bridge study is scheduled to be completed by mid-2005. Metro is expected to take about a year to complete the streetcar study, a requirement before applying for federal transportation money.
Congress holds the primary key to streetcar funding. Gustafson said Federal Transit Administration formulas used to rank projects for funding don’t favor streetcars because most rider trips are short and speeds are no faster than buses.
Gustafson said streetcars attract more urban development than bus routes. “It’s an ability to achieve high-quality livability in a dense urban environment,” he said. Gustafson said a growing number of communities are backing efforts by U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to create a funding category for “small” projects — including streetcars — that would cost the federal government no more than $75 million each. “It’s not a slam dunk,” Gustafson said. “We’re working hard to get eligible for federal funds.”
Portland Streetcar, created by the city of Portland to develop and operate the line, hopes to achieve a federal funding agreement by 2007. If it succeeds, Gustafson said eastside service would begin in 2009.
Business Wire
December 7, 2004
Bombardier Transportation announced today that it received a firm order from the Greater Toronto Transit Authority (GO Transit) for 10 BiLevel commuter rail vehicles. The order will add to GO Transit’s existing fleet of 372 Bombardier-built railcars. Valued at $26 million Cdn ($22 million US), the contract calls for the design, manufacture and delivery of the new commuter vehicles.
“The Bombardier BiLevel vehicle continues to be the most popular multi-level commuter rail car in North America,” said William Spurr, president, Bombardier Transportation-North America. “It is a service-proven transit solution that delivers unparalled reliability and cost efficiency, along with some of the shortest delivery schedules in the industry. The car’s time-tested design offers great benefits whether you are an established agency like GO Transit or a start-up operation like the new commuter rail service now being developed in the state of New Mexico,” Spurr added.
On October 13, 2004, Bombardier announced an order for 10 BiLevel cars from the Mid-Region Council of Governments and the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The company is also building 22 BiLevel cars ordered in September 2003 by l’Agence Metropolitaine de Transport in Montreal.
The GO Transit vehicles will be built at Bombardier’s Thunder Bay, Ontario, manufacturing facility. Production is expected to extend from February 2005 for approximately one year. Bombardier’s Services division also maintains GO Transit’s fleet of commuter rail cars and locomotives.
The first Bombardier BiLevel vehicle, designed in collaboration with GO Transit, went into service in 1978. Today, Bombardier has more than 740 BiLevel cars in operation with 10 public transit authorities across Canada and the United States.
PhillyNews
Dec. 8, 2004
While angry West Philadelphia residents told a City Council hearing that the endless Market Street El reconstruction is ruining their lives, SEPTA fired a prime contractor yesterday for being two years behind and using questionable safety practices in rebuilding the Cobbs Creek section of the elevated railroad.
The prime contractor fired back. “This project was cursed from the beginning,” said Pete Getchell, president of PKF Mark III, Inc. of Newtown, Bucks County, after learning that his company had been axed. “We are completely befuddled by the way SEPTA’s acted. We’ve done everything they told us to do and yet they just kept delaying things. They just don’t seem to want to get the job done.”
General Manager Faye Moore announced that SEPTA terminated its $74 million contract with PKF-Mark III Inc. for running more than 700 days behind schedule and for numerous safety violations. These include allegedly defective temporary steel towers to support the 100-year-old El while the new one is installed, and defective steel girders designed to support the new El’s railbed for presumably the next 100 years.
“It’s just not true,” Getchell said. “We’ve had the best minds in the country weigh in on this. We made presentations to SEPTA pointing out that there’s no safety issue here. They’ve steadfastly refused to agree. This is bizarre.”
Equally puzzling, he said, is PKF Mark III’s history of working on successful SEPTA projects, including the showplace Frankford Terminal at the opposite end of the same El that was bogged down in so much turmoil in West Philly. “How could we be performing so well on one project and the other one falls apart?” Getchell said. “It makes no sense.”
Things became so bitter that PKF sued SEPTA last month to get out of the Cobbs Creek El contract. “When is the last time you heard of a contractor walking away from a $70 million construction project?” Getchell said.
After hearing residents and small business owners complain bitterly about the chaos that the Market Street El rehab has inflicted upon them - dirt, smell, erratic parking regulations, dearth of parking causing the death of business - City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell only wanted to know one thing:
Will yesterday’s firing of PKF Mark III stretch the reconstruction beyond the already-unbearable 2008 completion deadline?
No, GM Moore assured her. The Cobbs Creek section, which was supposed to be finished next year, can still make the entire project’s 2008 deadline if a new contractor is hired by April.
She said that the Automatic Train Control Facilities at 52nd and 63rd streets were completed on time in 2002. The foundations for the new El’s “guideway” [elevated railway] will be finished this month, the guideway itself and the stations at 46th, 52nd, 56th and 60th streets by 2008.
That leaves PKF Mark III’s one-third-finished section: new stations at 63rd and Millbourne, and the railway between them. “We have to get this project done and get out of that neighborhood,” Moore told the Daily News. “I’m hopeful.”
The San Francisco Chronicle
DECEMBER 8, 2004,
It’s one thing to get a raise for doing a good job — but how about getting a raise because you might be fired?
That’s just what happened the other day over at BART when the Board of Directors handed out raises to the transit system’s top brass, effective Jan. 1.
The 5 percent increases — which will bring General Manager Tom Margro’s salary to $283,204 a year and general counsel Sherwood Wakeman’s pay to $200,512 — are just a bit less than the 6 percent hike that the BART rank-and-file got in July. But they are still quite a symbolic signal to be sending in these lean times.
So why did directors do it?
Well, according to BART board member Dan Richard — who was among the 6-1 majority that approved the raises — there were two reasons.
First, because the brass had a great year, as shown by BART’s being voted the best transit system in the nation by fellow managers in the American Public Transportation Association.
And second — get this — because Richard told fellow members that the managers might be fired by the incoming BART board. “We might as well give (raises) out now, because they might all be out by this time next year,” Richard said.
The driving force behind this little bit of holiday cheer — at least according to Richard — is the election last month of three board candidates who were backed by BART’s unions. They could tip the balance against the current management lineup when they come on board in January.
Or as Richard, who is leaving the board, put it: “I think the union is going to go after Margro. They want a pelt on the wall, and that’s why we gave him the boost.”
Fellow director Joel Keller, who is staying on the board, basically confirmed Richard’s premise for the raises. Keller said that while he voted for the increases mainly because of Margro’s performance, another factor was the possibility that the new majority will “use him as a symbol to be removed.”
Robert Au, political director of the Amalgamated Transport Workers union — which represents 800 of BART’s 3,000 employees — agreed that the unions weren’t happy with management, and that’s why they backed all the non-incumbents Nov. 2. “There is definitely a vocal group of union leaders who are advocating for a change,” he said. “Every year they claim to have a $40 million deficit — then every year it goes away,” Au said.
At the same time, workers’ grievances are through the roof. “We needed a change, for both the workers and the public,” Au said.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
December 8, 2004
On Monday, the first day of full commercial operation, we went looking for the southern terminus of the sleek new Hiawatha light-rail line.
No luck. We drove both ways along the Bloomington Strip. No signs for a station or a park-and-ride lot. We drove both ways along Cedar Avenue. Again no signs. We approached the Mall of America, only to be turned away by a barricaded parking ramp. No signs, no directions. We asked a security guard where to park to take the train. He shrugged.
Finally, on Old Shakopee Road near 28th Avenue, about three blocks east of the mall, we spotted a postage stamp of a sign directing us to LRT parking. From there our trip went smoothly. But we wondered how the Minnesota Department of Transportation could do such a bang-up job building its first rail line while conspiring, it seemed, to keep its location a secret. We’re confident that had Hiawatha been a new freeway, MnDOT would have erected plenty of those big green overheads to let us know about it.
As we said, our ride went smoothly, our 8:00 train gliding away from 28th Avenue with seats available. By Minnehaha Park, people were standing. By Lake Street we were sardines. At Nicollet Mall, first-time rider Katie Watson of Bloomington checked her watch and declared her commute a success, even though she had never found the parking lot. She would be early to work even on a rainy-snowy morning that slowed auto traffic to a crawl. “I liked it,” she said, comparing her 27-minute trip to those she had taken as a student in London.
Last Saturday, at opening ceremonies for the line’s new Bloomington stations, Sen. Norm Coleman had said it best: “We’re beginning to see the metro area of the 21st century taking shape. Let’s keep rolling.”
Indeed, momentum is important. Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin called Hiawatha “a metaphor for uniting the region,” urging completion of Northstar, the proposed commuter line to Big Lake, and light-rail connections to St. Paul and Eden Prairie.
McLaughlin and U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo deserve enormous credit for making Hiawatha a reality. Sabo’s Washington skills saved the project time and again, and McLaughlin never gave up despite stiff opposition from some of the same politicians who now celebrate the line’s early success.
“You have a national reputation already,” said deputy Federal Transit Administrator Don Gismondi, who joined Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau in praising the line for being delivered, in Molnau’s words, “on budget and ahead of schedule.” In all, the ceremony was a rare and refreshing display of bipartisan spirit.
Metro Transit estimated ridership at 87,500 on the first weekend, a spokesman commenting on streams of shoppers into the Mall of America and a crush of patrons to downtown events on Saturday night.
As for weekday commuters, they need big blue signs on the freeways and better signs on the streets. It’s not hospitable for MnDOT to keep its new trains a secret from road-weary south metro commuters, the very people who could benefit the most.
Statement By: Pete Getchell, President, PKF Mark III, Inc.
PR Newswire US
December 8, 2004
Yesterday, PKF Mark III, Inc., (“PKF”) received a letter of termination from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (“SEPTA”) relative to PKF work on the Cobbs Creek portion of the Market Street Elevated Reconstruction Project.
On October 26, 2004, PKF filed a complaint against the SEPTA in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County. The complaint alleges that SEPTA breached its $70 million contract with PKF relative to the Cobbs Creek portion of the Market Street Elevated Reconstruction (MSE) Project, causing significant delays and cost overruns. The complaint petitions the court to allow PKF to terminate its contract with SEPTA. The case is pending and we await a court date.
Well over 700 days behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, this project has been cursed from the beginning. Now we find ourselves in a situation where the only real losers here are the riders of the Blue Line, businesses along the elevated line and the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When is the last time you heard of a contractor walking away from a $70 million construction project? It simply doesn’t happen.
SEPTA has managed this project so badly that we had no other choice but to seek relief from the courts. SEPTA’s wrongful termination of our contract provides even further proof of this fact. We are confident that the court will find SEPTA breached its contract with PKF.
For the past 38 years, PKF has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction projects to this region, including the $40 million Frankfort Transportation Center #3 contract, right up the street from the Cobbs Creek job, as well as the Girard Avenue Light Rail Project.
Given SEPTA’s recent budget debacle, as well as our own experience with SEPTA on this job, it is time for the Governor, the Legislature or the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to get in there and figure out what is going on. SEPTA’s mismanagement of this project is the worst I have seen in over 30 years in this business. If SEPTA manages the entire organization the same way it’s managing the Market Street Rehabilitation Project, we are all in trouble.
Citywire
December 8, 2004
Stagecoach has seen a significant boost from both the weak dollar and the fact that Americans getting less fearful of flying.
The bus and rail operator’s US operations have benefited from the fact that the fear of terrorist attacks has retreated so that increasing numbers of Americans are going back to airports, and also the weak currency is attracting more foreign tourists, particularly for Christmas shopping trips to New York.
In spite of higher fuel charges, carrying more passengers has helped North American bus margins increase from 6.8% to 11.7% in the six months to 31 October. Fuel overall will cost the group an additional £11 million this year, £5 million in the first half and £6 million in the second. Stagecoach (SGC) has not been hit as badly as smaller bus operators, which are not big enough to hedge their fuel costs.
After allowing for the sales of disposed businesses, Citybus, Road King and Trainline, Stagecoach group turnover increased 6.7% to £882 million against £826.8 million in the first half of 2003. Profit before tax, goodwill amortisation and exceptional items rose from £60.3 million to £69.2 million, comfortably ahead of analysts forecasts. The interim dividend of Stagecoach, which operates 7,000 buses in 100 towns and cities in the UK, owns 49% of the Virgin Rail Group and operates South West Trains, Britains largest commuter rail franchise, increases 11.1% to 1p against 0.9p for the same period last year.
Stagecoach shares added 4.76% to 104.5p, up 4.75p. Stagecoach welcomes the Strategic Rail Authority plan to integrate rail services by reducing the number of franchises from 25 to 19. More people than expected are using South West Trains, which has been boosted by 8.3% the introduction of the new Desiro rolling stock. Virgin is negotiating with the Strategic Rail Authority for a new commercial deal on the West Coast Mainline franchise until 2012.
The Virgin CrossCountry franchise is also being changed, probably with the addition of some regional railways, but it will continue for at least another year on the existing budgets. If the SRA decides to open up the franchise to outside competition, chief executive Brian Souter thinks Virgin is in a good position to win it.
The return of capital to shareholders by the issue of new redeemable B preference shares now totals £241.1 million. Souter says this makes for a more efficient capital structure which allows it to take advantage of acquisition opportunities and apply for new rail franchises. It is short listed for InterCity East Coast and Integrated Kent rail.
Meanwhile, Stagecoach is working with Siemens to develop a new bus optical guidance system. The idea is to produce a cost-effective system to combat road congestion. Optical guidance systems use cameras mounted in the front of the bus which reads coded markings painted on the road and activates a motor on the steering column which allows vehicles to keep to their routes within a few centimetres and pull accurately into bus stops.
Company News Feed formerly Regulatory News Service
December 8, 2004
Stagecoach Group and Siemens Transportation Systems are pleased to announce today (8 December 2004) that they have signed an agreement to develop a new bus optical guidance product for the UK.
The two companies have agreed to investigate adapting the Siemens optical guidance system, currently in use on the continent, for use on conventional buses in the UK.
Stagecoach and Siemens will also work together, and with local stakeholders, to scope the technical, operational and statutory issues around the potential introduction of the technology on a pilot basis in a heritage city in the UK.
Brian Souter, Stagecoach Group Chief Executive, said: “We believe that optical guidance, as part of a comprehensive package of pro-public transport measures, has huge potential to help tackle the increasing road congestion that is affecting many parts the UK, particularly our heritage cities.
“The use of this cutting-edge technology on conventional buses will allow us to deliver a step-change in the quality of public transport provision. It is flexible, can be delivered quickly and represents excellent value for money.
“Stagecoach has been at the forefront of research and development of new technology and innovative environmental projects as well as new thinking on marketing bus services. We are delighted to continue this investment in the future and we look forward to working with the expertise of Siemens to develop a new transport solution that will be a powerful tool in attracting people out of their cars and could benefit millions of people across the country.”
David Wilson, director of Siemens Transportation Systems said: “Siemens is delighted to be part of this project. Guided bus systems are a cost effective and environmentally friendly way of reducing city centre congestion.”
The optical guidance system includes a camera mounted in front of the steering wheel, which can read coded markings painted on the road. An image processor follows the road markings and detects and corrects deviations by activating a motor on the steering column.
Such is the accuracy of the system that it keeps the vehicle on the required route with a tolerance of only a few centimetres. This allows vehicles to pull in very accurately to bus stops to ensure passengers have a smooth level access to the bus. No heavy and expensive infrastructure is required to install the busway. The optical guidance bars are painted on the road surface and can be relocated at minimal expense.
Stagecoach and Siemens are already working closely together on the introduction of a #1billion order for new Desiro trains at South West Trains, the UK’s largest commuter rail franchise.
The Irish Times
December 8, 2004
The British Airports Authority (BAA) has accused the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) of trying to “murder” a key part of its business.
BAA is moaning about SRA plans to stop the non-stop rail link between Gatwick Airport and central London being, well, non-stop. Apparently, it is such a well-run and efficient line that the managers at the SRA want it to start stopping, so to speak, to pick up some of the south east’s long-suffering commuters along the way and drop them at dormitory towns such as East Croydon.
Forgive the cynicism, but I reckon that BAA sees a potent threat to a lucrative revenue stream. This has nothing to do with concerns for the customer.
Naturally, BAA has raised images of passengers struggling with heavy luggage, fighting it out with battle-hardened commuters for seats. Which, to be honest, is a bit rich coming from the agency that brings us third-world standards of comfort at Heathrow and one or two other UK airports I could mention.
Nowhere at any of the establishments that BAA is responsible for is there evidence of the caring attitude for the customer that they have suddenly discovered for travellers on the Victoria-Gatwick line.
Another BAA-owned rail link is the Heathrow Express. When it works, this is a marvellous service, at least as far as it goes - which is Paddington, the middle of nowhere for those of us trying to get to the City. The Heathrow Express is always crowded and is expensive: around four times the cost of an equivalent tube ticket, but cheaper and infinitely faster than a taxi.
I imagine that it is a huge cash cow for BAA, costing passengers, on my rough calculations, about 50p per kilometre. At a guess, I would say that this is the most expensive train ride in the UK, if the not the world. But compared to the alternatives, well worth the price.
BAA must have noticed the cash-generating potential of getting people to and from the airport. A few years ago, it teamed up with National Express, which most people think is a bus company, and suggested that the Stansted Express franchise be transferred to its new joint venture. I’m not sure whether the joint venture got the deal it wanted but it is interesting to note that National Express now controls the Stansted Express.
All three “express” rail routes connecting London with its main airports are exercises in customer rip-off. For Stansted and Gatwick there are no realistic alternatives, so the train operators have a virtual monopoly. BAA can claim that the tube is a competitor on the Heathrow run, but only students and people on community release programmes venture onto the underground these days.
Pricing can be a mystery. It costs a lot more to buy a ticket on the Heathrow Express train than from a ticket machine on the platform. Ryanair have two prices for a Stansted Express ticket - buy from the desk in Dublin Airport, not on the plane, it’s much cheaper.
The worst travel experience is, without a doubt, the Stansted Express. At peak times, there is every chance you will have to stand for the entire 45-minute journey (often for a lot longer than that, with delays common). Journeys advertised as non-stop always, without exception, stop at Tottenham Hale. Space for luggage is limited and seating, when it can be found, is only marginally more comfortable than standing. Liverpool Street station, the London terminus for Stansted, is a complete nightmare, where the battle with war-weary commuters can be a ferocious one.
The battle over the Gatwick Express will be interesting to watch. Whether commuting to work or travelling to the airport, the experience is almost always squalid and slightly degrading. The SRA clearly wants to degrade things further for embattled commuters and tourists alike.
When travelling on the British public transport system, it is easy to see why this country has a reputation for tolerance and stoicism. These people will put up with anything. It really is true: the British don’t complain. Shoddy standards of service, particularly from the public sector, have become the accepted norm. Sooner or later, surely, the idea that standards of provision have to rise, before an extra penny of taxpayers’ money is spent, will become popular.
Oakland Tribune
December 9, 2004
Building a trolley system to connect downtown to Jack London Square would be too expensive and disruptive, a group studying transportation options for the area determined this week.
Instead, the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency said a bus would be the best way to transport people from the city’s downtown BART station to its burgeoning entertainment district. “It seems to us … that the very best short-term solution is an attractively designed clean-air bus,” said Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel (West Oakland-Downtown). “We wanted to be realistic in what we could do as quickly as possible.”
The city asked BART to study a rail connection between the square and downtown three years ago, but that study found a streetcar loop would be better and less expensive than an underground rail connection.
BART planners looked at building a new station on the existing line near Fourth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way but dismissed it as too costly. They also looked at building an underground shuttle train from the 12th Street Station to Jack London Square but also found that to be too costly.
On Tuesday, however, even the streetcar system, which was estimated to cost between $38 million to $61 million, was found to be too expensive. “It’s better than nothing, but good luck,” said a skeptical Gary Knecht, a Jack London Square neighborhood activist. “It’s very uncreative … it will not ease congestion.”
Nadel agreed that the bus solution will not turn as many heads as a streetcar loop through Chinatown and possibly around Lake Merritt but said she wanted something in place as soon as possible. In the future, she said, a streetcar system could be built.
But even the shuttle bus will have financial hurdles to jump. No governmental agency is taking the lead in helping create a plan, and no agency has the money to spare. “It will remain just a paper idea until someone uses the paper and turns it into reality,” said BART spokesman Linton Johnson. “It’s up to whoever wants to fund it.”
Nadel said she will prod the City Council into considering additional studies and hopes to create a not-for-profit organization to generate a public-private partnership. “I am very interested in making sure that it happens, but it really depends on who comes up to the plate,” she said. “Who has the funds and wants to pursue it.”
Nadel suggested two developers, Ellis Partners and Signature Properties, could donate some funds. Ellis Partners is constructing a nine-building entertainment district in the square, while Signature Properties is seeking approvals for a housing development on property known as Oak to Ninth.
Newsday (New York)
December 9, 2004
Several minutes after an F train derailed near Herald Square, third-rail power was inexplicably restored.
“People didn’t get the message that the train was on the ground,” motorman Kenneth Sanders said yesterday. He means people at New York City Transit’s control center, who should have requested that the power control department keep the power off beneath Sixth Avenue during the emergency.
“Now, the train is not properly grounded, it is not on the rails,” said Sanders, an 18-year veteran. “One of the contact shoes is probably touching a rail or some metal on the ground. You had all this arcing and fireworks.”
These are the first insider accounts of the moments immediately after last week’s derailment and subsequent electrical fires in Manhattan. It was no ordinary Wednesday under Sixth Avenue, where disruptions played havoc on riders throughout the day. By the evening rush, five people had been injured.
Problems began at 4:06 a.m., when Sanders’ F train, carrying more than 50 people, derailed 500 feet south of the 34th Street station. The fourth car passed over an improperly secured section of track that was being replaced when it jumped the tracks. The train, flagged along by a track crew, was moving slowly through a work area.
A maintenance supervisor immediately removed rail power at an emergency alarm box, according to a preliminary report by the agency’s office of system safety.
But, as the track crew gathered around the derailed car, the power was suddenly turned on, setting off electrical flashes and blasts. Track power is automatically restored after several minutes unless the control center asks that it remain off. “It sounded like a rolling artillery strike: Boom, boom, boom, boom,” Sanders said. “All heck broke lose. The guys on the road scattered.”
An NYC Transit spokesman yesterday denied this version of events. “I’m being told it didn’t happen,” Charles Seaton said, adding that the investigation into the derailment and fires was continuing.
Still, Lionel Wheeler, the conductor, said he watched from his subway car window as a track supervisor with a heavy accent tried, without success, to contact the control center. “Control center couldn’t understand him,” said Wheeler, 37, a conductor for 3 1/2 years. “Then, the power came back, the explosions started and customers started panicking.”
Wheeler said members of the track crew outside his train ran for their lives, yelling and screaming. “I knew something was terribly wrong,” he said.
His passengers, Wheeler said, bolted for the rear cars. Smoke was thick and heavy. From his booth, he unlocked the emergency doors between the R46 cars, enabling riders to gather in the last car. “You could see panic in their eyes,” Wheeler said. “No one knew what was happening. They saw the track workers run away screaming.”
Wheeler stopped to check on an older man with breathing problems. Then, with the help of track workers, he evacuated 37 riders from the rear car to a narrow catwalk and up the stairs in an emergency exit leading to Sixth Avenue. “I told them I want the women and the elderly to come first and then everybody else,” said Wheeler, who received his first fire and evacuation training only last summer. “The track workers helped out immensely,” he said.
Jerry Shook, director of rail safety for the state Public Transportation Safety Board, said his agency was investigating. He said he had not heard reports that track power may have been restored prematurely. “During the initial investigation, we took no exceptions to the evacuation of the passengers,” he said. “Everything worked well.”
Sanders and two track workers helped evacuate about 20 riders from the first car along a catwalk about 500 feet to the 34th Street station. When one of his passengers panicked, Sanders put his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Sanders, who last received fire and evacuation training five years ago, said he calmly told the man. “If you start panicking, I’m going to lose everybody.”
His riders safe, Sanders said, he climbed back into the tunnel and walked to the train. After a derailment, the motorman’s job requires that he secure each car’s mechanical hand break.
The Baltimore Sun
December 9, 2004
For some, the streetcar meant more than a mode of transportation. It symbolized an era of city life.
From the late 1800s to the 1960s, streetcars guided Baltimore’s growth, carrying people from home to their jobs, the movies, malls and amusement parks. This weekend, they will carry people once again, if only a short ways.
The Baltimore Streetcar Museum hosts its annual Tinsel Trolley this weekend and Dec. 18-19, offering 20-minute streetcar rides with Santa Claus along with its usual exhibitions. Rather than head downtown, the streetcars run around a 1 1/2 -mile track near the museum - but riders will still get an authentic experience, said Andy Blumberg, the museum’s director of public affairs.
“They can get an idea of what it was like to ride the old streetcars,” Blumberg said. “They can get a sense, through the photos and exhibits, of what Baltimore was like and how it grew.”
One of the six streetcars in service is No. 7407, the last streetcar ever to run in Baltimore. Built in 1944, it was put out of commission in 1963. In its nearly 20 years of service, it saw the Beltway’s construction, people leave the city for the suburbs and the growing traffic congestion as suburb-dwellers came for the morning commute.
Now, the only streetcar that runs in the city is the light rail train. With its overhead power source and tracks, the light rail is a direct descendant of the original streetcars.
The museum also has a 16-foot Christmas tree on display, complete with a model train set, of course. Some museum employees will read Christmas stories to guests, and others will play seasonal tunes on the organ. Patrons who recognize the songs are more than welcome to chime in for a verse or two, Blumberg said.
Since the museum started the event 10 years ago, it’s gotten a little more popular every season, Blumberg said. “I think one of the big things that makes us so special is it’s not static.”
The usual streetcar exhibitions and photographs are on display, but it’s the streetcar rides with Santa that attract the most people, Blumberg said. “For kids, it’s a magic time,” he said. “A lot of the adults and the grandparents who remember the streetcars get a kick out of them too.”
Baltimore Streetcar Museum’s annual Tinsel Trolley is 1:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and Dec. 18-19. Admission is $6 for adults and $4 for children under 12. The museum is at 1901 Falls Road. Call 410-547-0264 or visit www.geocities.com/tinsel trolley.
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
December 9, 2004
They didn’t all laugh when the Utah Transit Authority sat down to plan Salt Lake City’s light-rail service. Some people complained, fumed, even filed lawsuits over what they saw as an expensive, disruptive boondoggle.
Today, five years after the 15-mile TRAX line from Sandy to the Delta Center opened, the trains are absolutely packed during rush hours and before and after big downtown events. A branch line runs out to the University of Utah, filled through the day with students, visitors to the U.’s medical facilities and, on game day, a sea of Ute red.
It will forever stick in the craw of some good people that UTA leaders got the blinking thing built despite the fact that a 1992 ballot referendum to raise the money was rejected by the voters. And some downtown business people — and understandably bitter former downtown business people — will never forgive TRAX for the disruption to Main Street commerce during construction.
But, although it may be after the fact, TRAX has received a solid vote of confidence from its many riders, some 43,000 every business day. It is also the chief prize sought by leaders of several surrounding communities.
TRAX should also receive the endorsement of a great many others who never ride those rails but who do benefit from the fact that the lines do, even if ever-so-slightly, ease the burden on the city’s air quality, highways and, of special interest to downtown, parking.
A modern city demands a modern public transit system and, these days, that means a light-rail system of the sort that also runs in cities from Dallas to Denver to Portland, Ore. It will further demand the other alternatives being planned by UTA — a heavier-gauge commuter rail system and bus rapid-transit lanes.
Of course, just like a TRAX train, the public transit needs of the Salt Lake Valley are constantly in motion.
TRAX doubters have long suggested that the light-rail system does not so much serve new passengers as it siphons them off from various bus routes that now run less-than-full. If that is not the case, it should be painstakingly documented. It if is, then bus routes should be altered, even reduced, accordingly.
And, like any large vehicle that runs so often and so rapidly through busy neighborhoods, the risk a TRAX train poses to other vehicles and to pedestrians cannot be ignored just because the train has become a familiar sight. Efforts to cut down on the number of injuries and fatal accidents involving TRAX must continue, by UTA and by those who walk or drive nearby.
On balance, though, there can be no question the people who pushed and shoved TRAX into the world of reality did all of the Salt Lake Valley a favor. And they are poised to do more.
The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, Va.)
December 9, 2004
Bus Rapid Transit plans for the resort have been put on hold until city leaders get a big-picture glimpse of Virginia Beach public transportation needs that include the rapidly growing Town Center.
That assessment should be provided within a month or two by Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas Inc., an international planning and engineering corporation based in New York City, members of the Resort Advisory Commission learned Dec. 2.
“I don’t think we should rush into things,” said Joseph Taylor, who heads the advisory commission subcommittee on transportation and parking. “There are a lot of things we need to know, for instance what federal funds are available.”
There’s another factor bolstering the argument for delay, noted commission member John F. Malbon. “One of the things I learned is there’s already an interest in a linkage between the resort and Town Center and that linkage is going to grow,” Malbon said.
Besides, said advisory commission chair William D. Almond, a separate transportation study is about t o begin on Town Center, the rapidly growing commercial and office hub in Pembroke . “There’s been all sorts of discussion about linking Town Center to the resort - and all kinds of highfalutin’ concepts - but the real simple thing is put a train back on the track,” he said.
The Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, system has been touted as the answer to transportation needs for large conventions that will be booked at the new $202 million convention center when it opens in 2007 on 19th Street, six blocks from the Oceanfront.
If approved by the City Council, start-up costs for the program would be in the neighborhood of $33 million. Adopting it would entail altering traffic and parking patterns along Oceanfront streets, possibly requiring one-way traffic flows along Atlantic and Pacific avenues. This factor alone has raised the concern of many resort innkeepers and merchants.
The BRT system may become a moot issue. A recent survey of convention planners indicated that private bus companies are preferred by their customers, because they are better suited to their daily needs, James B. Ricketts , head of the city’s Convention and Visitor Development Department, told advisory commissioners. “The majority of convention representatives really want to have private transportation,” he said.
Nation
December 9, 2004
The B Grimm consortium has offered the lowest bid - Bt25.917 billion - for the 28-kilometre rail project linking Bangkok’s Makkasan area with Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
The consortium is led by B Grimm MBM, with partners Siemens AG of Germany and Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction.
Youdtana Tupcharoen, deputy governor of the State Railway of Thailand (SRT), said it could not yet announce the bid winner as it needed to take into account other financial proposals. “It will take another week before we can announce the bid winner. I think we should be able to announce the result on December 20,” said Youdtana.
The SRT has set the median bid price of its Airport Link project at Bt25.917 billion, and the B Grimm consortium’s bid was Bt60,209 lower than this figure. It outbid two rival consortia by a wide margin.
The East-West Consortium bid was priced at Bt29.44 billion. This group consists of Italian-Thai Development, China State (Beijing), China State Thailand, Vossloh of Germany, CAF of Spain and Inabensa of Spain.
The third consortium, MCBM, offered a bid price of Bt43.53 billion. This consortium consists of Ch Karnchang, Mitsubishi Industrial, Bilfinger Berger AG, Mitsui Co Ltd and Kinki Sharyo.
The airport-link project will feature a high-speed train linking downtown Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
Construction is expected to begin early next year and will be ready in mid-2008. The new airport is scheduled to be opened on September 28 next year, although it now appears the opening will be delayed until April 2006.
Under the project financing proposal, B Grimm consortium proposed a floating minimum lending rate, or MLR, of minus two percentage points, and a fixed MLR of minus one percentage point.
MLR is the country’s prime lending rate and is currently 5.7 per cent. A financial fee of Bt1.67 billion, including hedging costs and taxes, will also be charged on top of the construction cost, according to the B Grimm consortium proposal.
At Bt29.44 billion, the East-West Consortium is higher than the median price by Bt3.53 billion, or 13.6 per cent. Its project financing is a fixed rate of MLR minus two percentage points for Bt18.33 billion of its proposed bid, and MLR minus one percentage point for the remaining Bt15 billion.
The East-West Consortium has also proposed a one-time fee payment of 5.2 per cent of the total construction cost.
At Bt43.54 billion, the MCBM consortium has submitted a bid higher than the median price by Bt17.61 billion. The project financing of its proposal is MLR minus 1.75 per cent. The one-time payment fee of 1.1 per cent of the total construction cost.
An SRT source said the B Grimm consortium was most likely to win as it had submitted the lowest bid. However, the SRT wanted to further negotiate with all bidders on the other financial aspects of the airport link, the source added.
The Times (London)
December 9, 2004
SURVIVORS of the Paddington train crash are urging that the most dangerous rail signals be advertised at stations after evidence that train drivers are missing more red lights. Forty-nine sets of signals have been passed at danger at least three times in the past five years.
Serious red-light incidents, in which there was a significant risk of collision, have increased by 20 per cent in the past year, from 130 to 157.
The Paddington Survivors’ Group said that the signals that are passed at danger most frequently should be revealed to passengers in the same way that punctuality tables are displayed on platforms.
Jonathan Duckworth, chairman of the group, said the rail industry needed to be shamed into tackling dangerous signals by being forced to publish their locations. “If passengers were able to see a monthly list of dangerous signals, they could put pressure on the industry to deal with the ones on their lines. Unfortunately, the industry has a mindset that a certain number of deaths are acceptable. We are not calling for limitless spending on safety, but the industry should start from the position that no death is acceptable.”
The Paddington crash, which killed 31 people and injured 400 in October 1999, was caused by a newly qualified driver running past a red light that had been missed on five occasions. The rail authorities had been aware that the signal was difficult to see, but had failed to improve its visibility.
Details of the most dangerous signals are published by the Rail Safety and Standards Board, but are tucked away in an appendix in a report that is available only to those who know where to look on the board’s website.
The group has published a review of safety recommendations made after the Paddington crash and that at Southall in 1997, which was also caused by a driver missing a red light. It says that more than 20 recommendations have yet to be implemented, including those with the greatest potential to prevent further fatal crashes.
On Saturday it will be the third anniversary of the signing of the “Paddington declaration”, in which the Government and rail industry leaders pledged to implement all the recommendations “within the timescale set by the (public inquiries)”. Mr Duckworth said: “We all remember the words of the Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) that money would be no object. It looks like these words were somewhat hollow. We are very concerned that several key safety recommendations have not yet been fulfilled and we suspect some of the delays are caused by budgetary restrictions.”
The report questioned the industry’s decision to delay for at least ten years fitting a high-speed automatic braking system across the network. The industry argued that the existing version of the system was too expensive to justify the average of two lives a year that it would save. The report challenged Network Rail’s decision to fit the much cheaper Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), which is fully effective only at speeds below 75mph, to only 300 of the 2,500 “plain-line” signals identified as high risk by train companies. Plain line signals are those on tracks without junctions.
A digital radio system that would allow signallers to alert drivers to dangers had been delayed indefinitely, the report said, partly because residents objected to 100ft radio masts in 2,000 locations. In addition, contractors were not being monitored properly and were installing substandard equipment, including “cheap rails”.
*A lorry driver and the driver of a train were slightly injured last night in a crash at an unmanned level crossing at Porthmadog, Gwynedd. Passengers on the Arriva Trains Wales service were unhurt and the train was not derailed.
KRNV-TV Reno
December 10, 2005
Las Vegas Monorail officials insist the loss of a bolt from a train during testing a few days ago is not a sign of larger problems at the idled system.
The two-inch-long bolt fell off a train ventilation unit November 28th near the Las Vegas Hilton. It was found by a hotel security guard.
Monorail builder Bombardier Incorporated of Canada says the bolt was defective.
Monorail administrators in Las Vegas say the mishap has nothing to do with problems that forced a shut-down of the 650 million dollar system in early September. In one case, a wheel fell off. Two other times, it was parts from a train drive shaft.
Testing is continuing, with officials saying the system might be running again by New Year’s.
New York Times
December 10, 2004
In an effort to raise more than $1 billion, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to sell or lease for commercial use many of its 14,000 properties, including train stations, commuter parking lots and maintenance yards.
The move to raise money comes as the agency, struggling to deal with a crushing debt, is expected to vote next week to increase fares. In a separate step to help the authority through its fiscal crisis, state officials are also considering taking up to $1 billion a year in sales tax revenue that goes to New York City and instead giving it to the authority, people briefed on their discussions said yesterday.
As part of its proposal to raise money from its huge portfolio of properties, the authority is looking to hire a real estate consultant and broker to review its landholdings and buildings and draw up a plan for marketing them to developers and business owners. The agency has already solicited proposals to renovate a handful of historic train stations in the suburbs to accommodate retail shops and offices, similar to what it has long done at Grand Central Terminal.
At the Hastings, Pelham, Port Chester, Spring Valley, Tarrytown, Tuckahoe and Yonkers stations on the Metro-North Railroad, for example, the authority wants to retrofit the entire buildings for commercial use, with the exception of space for a ticket booth, rest rooms and a public waiting area. The authority said the distinctive antique stations, some with tile or slate roofs, offer businesses an “excellent opportunity to quickly create an acknowledged presence in each community.”
In an 11-page request for proposals from real estate consultants that was issued last month, the authority said it was also interested in promoting development opportunities at other stations and parking areas on the Metro-North and Long Island lines, as well as “all rail yards, fan plants, substations, bus depots” and other properties belonging to the New York City Transit system.
The attempt to generate revenue from its vast real estate holdings is the latest example of the transportation authority and government officials taking unorthodox steps to deal with a growing financial crisis that has forced the authority to consider a mix of fare increases and service cuts when its board meets next week.
Katherine N. Lapp, the authority’s executive director, said in an interview this week that by turning its attention to real estate, the authority hopes to raise $1 billion for its capital budget from the sale of property and air rights over authority-owned yards, as well as money for its operating budget from the stepped-up leasing of train stations for shops and offices.
“Given this agency, and the demands we have to meet, no stone can be left unturned,” Ms. Lapp said. “A billion dollars is a real aggressive target. But it is possible. We’ve got to try, and that’s what this request for proposals is all about.”
The $1 billion goal, she said, includes estimated profits from the sale of air rights over rail yards in Brooklyn for a basketball arena for the Nets and on the West Side of Manhattan for a football stadium for the Jets. But Ms. Lapp said she could also envision, for example, selling parcels of surplus property for commercial development along the 1,000 miles of right-of- way the authority controls near commuter rail lines and bridges.
By committing the proceeds of property sales to its capital budget, which finances the construction or improvement of physical assets, the authority would not be narrowing the multibillion-dollar gaps projected for its operating budget in the next few years. But it would allow the authority to avoid going further into debt by using the cash to pay for capital improvements, such as the purchase of new subway cars.
The authority’s plan to raise fares and impose service cuts to close deficits in its operating budget has angered rider advocates and politicians, who say the state and city must increase their subsidies for mass transit and the authority should do more to cut administrative expenses. Any additional income from leases and rentals, which currently total roughly $200 million a year, would help balance the operating budget.
Aides to Governor George E. Pataki emphasized that while the administration is weighing many options, it has not settled on any plans or proposals yet.
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who oversees the transit agency as the chairman of the Assembly’s committee on corporations, authorities and commissions, said he was troubled by the proposal to get city taxpayers to bear the burden of keeping the transit system afloat. “The governor has no right to punish the people of New York City to keep the transit system of New York City in good repair,” he said.
Last week, the agency’s chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, who was appointed by Governor Pataki, outlined his own proposal to increase a half-dozen business, real estate and fuel taxes to raise $900 million a year to help pay for the authority’s five-year rebuilding program. His proposal got a cool reception in Albany.
Las Vegas Business Press
December 10, 2004
Modifications to the Las Vegas Monorail trains are being implemented and tested after two separate studies revealed that the train carriage had design flaws that caused parts to break off in two distinct incidents prior to its September 8 shutdown.
After being out of service for three months and losing millions of dollars in potential revenue, the monorail is working to satisfy all safety requirements to get the advanced transportation system rolling again as quickly as possible, with the most optimistic forecasts having the futuristic trains running by New Year’s Eve.
Even if that target is reached, the fallout from the monorail’s operational problem could be greater than its parts. The shutdown forced bond rating companies to flag the system’s bond credit and blackened the eye of its builder, Montreal-based train manufacturer Bombardier Inc., already reeling from problems and sagging sales in its aircraft manufacturing division. It could eventualy hurt chances for the system to receive federal funding for its second phase extension to downtown.
Despite the setbacks, stakeholders in the system express confidence that the monorail’s difficulties are mere aberrations that are to be expected with a revolutionary system and its long term prospects are intact.
“At the end of the day, it is about moving people from point A to point B,” says Francois Badeau, one of the founders of the system and current chairman of Promethean Partners, the company charged with signing advertisers onto the system’s trains and station. “It was [built because] of problems with congestion and pollution, and this town needs it. The monorail is part of the Las Vegas experience and everyone wants it to succeed. Everyone is waiting for the monorail to happen.”
Waiting for success has become integral to the 4.2-mile, $650 million system since its inception. Originally slated for a January opening this year, the launch was pushed back to March and then finally happened on July 15 after problems with the software program that controlled the driverless trains.
The current wait is the result of two episodes in which parts fell from two separate moving trains. On September 1, a 20-inch steering tire broke off, forcing closure of the line for one week so that the wheel assemblies on all nine trains could be replaced. Re-opened on September 7, a piece of a train’s drive shaft subsequently split off and hit the track on the following day, causing a small electrical explosion and putting the system out of order ever since.
To uncover whether there was an underlying problem, Bombardier undertook an extensive inspection of the overall system, which was completed last month. The Las Vegas Monorail Company hired engineering analysis firm, Exponent Inc. from California, to conduct a parallel study.
According to Ron Lynn, director of the Building Division in the Clark County Department of Development Service, which has assigned a full time employee to the monorail problem, the Exponent report has yet to be finalized but an oral presentation on its findings was given last week.
Both reports concur on the primary causes of the monorail’s woes, Lynn says. While train drive shafts are normally designed to be placed horizontally, the monorail drive shaft was set at an angle for a variety of reasons, including space efficiency. While not typically a problem, the drive shafts and the entire monorail trains experienced excessive vibration when navigating the numerous curves, twists and inclines of the track at higher speeds.
Normally, monorail tracks are engineered to have a minimal deviation from a straight line. “The train was designed in a perfect environment [of a laboratory],” Lynn says. “Every alignment is custom-made to where you make [turns]. This kind induces stress. The track has different elevations of height. There’s a hill in it. Between 17 and 23 miles per hours, there was undue stress in the undercarriage.”
Since realigning the track is cost-prohibitive, to avoid crawling from station to station, the drive shaft was redesigned to lay almost flat while the undercarriage was also modified and then reinforced with more cable, washers and the like to absorb and reduce the vibrations. “Secondary glue stuff, if you will,” Lynn adds.
The alterations were implemented on seven of the nine trains by the end of last week and trains have been running all along the line to test the repairs. In addition, other subsystems of the trains, such as the automated doors and driving systems, are being checked out concurrently.
Once satisfied that the solution is the right one, each monorail train will be set through a series of cycles, or complete back-and-forth runs along the track, before being recommissioned and allowed to operate commercially.
The number of cycles has yet to be determined, although Lynn said that a protocol should be set this week. “When we’re comfortable with the repairs, we’ll go through recommissioning,” he adds. “It will be in excess of 1,000 cycles before being recommissioned. We’re running the seven trains 24-hours a day. We’ve exceeded 1,000 cycles already and it’s not even for recommissioning.”
Under the best case scenario, the monorail could be back in service for the 300,000 anticipated visitors expected on the Strip for the New Year weekend but a definitive re-opening date is not on the timetable yet. “I hate to commit to something because the words ‘If everything goes according to plan’ have so many [variables],” says Lynn. “We want to review the condition of the trains prior to recommissioning. If there are problems, we’ll push the numbers back. Cost is not one of our issues. It needs to be safe.”
While the cost has not been released, a price is being paid on numerous fronts. Missing out on an estimated $85,000 daily at the fare box, the monorail has lost more than $8 million to date.
As painful, the $1 million per train and $1 million per station that was to be raised from advertising on the system and expected to produce $6.5 million, or 11.5 percent of total revenues, this year has barely produced a dime as advertisers such as wireless phone provider Nextel Communications, which took on the $2 million station at the Las Vegas Convention Center and one of the trains, are not paying for what is not happening. “They are only asked to pay if it works,” says Badeau. “[Nextel] is disappointed but they’re not paying. They’re very patient and very committed. They can’t wait to get back on track.”
Despite loss of ad revenues, Badeau claims the monorail’s technical problems have not hurt potential future sales in Promethean Partners’ discussions with other advertisers, many of whom have experienced similar problems with their own products and service. He notes, however, that they have added to meeting times. “With all of our negotiations, it was not an issue,” he says. “We started negotiations before the problem and nobody stopped negotiations because of that … We sell the big picture.”
The big picture includes monorail service operating from downtown to the airport and that could become more difficult to finance if crucial federal funding is withdrawn.
According to the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC), which oversees public transportation development in the area, the monorail project has applied for a $159 million grant from the Federal Transit Agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation to help finance the second phase, 2.25 mile extension from the Sahara casino to Fremont Street for a total cost of $453 million. The line is tentatively scheduled to begin operating in mid-2007.
The monorail must submit annual reports every August, known as 5309 reports, to the FTA, which gives each application a rating from highly recommended, recommended and not recommended. Rated “recommended” in 2003, the project is expected to receive its latest rating in the next two months.
To qualify for the funds, the monorail would be required to show the needs and benefits of the proposed system, which would include data showing rider volumes for six continuous months on the present monorail system. That stipulation would be impossible to meet under the sporadic operation to date, although there is still time to acquire six months of continuous operation by the next August filing.
According to RTC spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman, while receiving a “not recommended” mark is not theoretically a grant killer, it could put it out of practical reach amid thousands of applications seeking the limited and shrinking federal funding.
“[The monorail] needs to show riders,” she says. “If it does not receive ‘recommended’ status, obviously the opportunity to receive federal funding is significantly jeopardized. It would go to the back of the line while others go ahead. Everyone is vying for those dollars. Obviously, [federal officials] are looking very closely at it. But once it is up and running, and there is acceptable ridership, meaning it can support itself financially, [current problems] can be overlooked.”
Like a parent ministering to a sick child, monorail officials remain upbeat about the system, even with all the difficulties. They contend the monorail’s ultimate success will be a result of growing support as much as diminishing problems.
“[The city] waited 10 years,” says Badeau. “It was opened for six weeks and people had a taste. They realized they can’t wait for it to work. Let’s not makes this more serious than it is. It is just a disappointment … The monorail will be here for the next 60 years. This is just a hiccup.”
Newark Star Ledger.
December 10, 2004
The streetcars never stood a chance. There was no way to beat the oil companies, the highway builders, the auto manufacturers, the housing developers and the rest of the pro- growth lobby. They were like a wolf pack, and public transit was their prey. Who needs all those lumbering trolley cars and buses cluttering city streets? The future belonged to the mobile. And that meant getting to where you wanted to go when you wanted to get there.
For postwar America, the destination was increasingly beyond the city limits. To the suburbs.
Suburbs were nothing new. But they tended to be quiet havens for the well-to-do people who earned enough money in cities like New York, Newark and Chicago to live the elegant life in Millburn, Rumson or Winnetka.
The face of America began to change in the 1950s. Potato farms gave way to housing developments, very often places with no there there. No town centers. Playgrounds over parks. Pretty good schools with lots of room for expansion.
As more people left the cities, the city streets turned meaner and people took to staying home after dark. The nation’s subways and buses and “els” were viewed as no place to be at night, and street cars all but disappeared.
In 1940, there were 19,600 miles of light-rail track in the United States. By the late’60s, that number was reduced to 2,049. No matter. Detroit was producing millions of cars and trucks every year. Besides, now that Americans were living in suburbs, they tended to reside farther from their job sites, which were, often as not, in remote office parks, impractical for public transit.
That was the way of it for decades. But now we are evidently coming full circle. Cities are starting to look pretty good to commuters who have to confront traffic twice a day, especially in a state like New Jersey, squeezed between New York and Philadelphia.
Smart Growth America and the National Association of Realtors recently released a survey which contends that nearly half of Americans say they would prefer to live in a city or in a close-in suburb than to face a long commute, whatever the benefits of country living. Flirtation with urban living is even stronger; 52 percent of respondents plan to move to a city within three years.
Traffic in this state is getting bad, and it cannot do anything but get worse. Long gone are the days when the opening of a new road afforded at least temporary relief. There is no place to put new roads, and even if there were, militant citizen groups would surely block them. Sooner or later, as gridlock becomes the norm, government will have to step in and impose rationing of driving hours.
Everybody’s frustrated, and some drivers have gone over the top, speeding and changing lanes at every opportunity, crossing median strips and tailgating to intimidate fellow drivers who are not keeping up, which is to say not moving at 20 mph over the speed limit.
There is a debate raging in science circles over what accounts for the sharp rise in the incidence of heart attacks among drivers who have just finished a trip. Is it caused by driving stress or by the extra pollution drivers are exposed to?
What difference does it make? The Bush administration refuses to believe that carbon monoxide and other auto emissions have any connection to global warming, if there is such a thing. The administration makes no effort to conserve energy and does what it can to help increase the number of gas-guzzling, view-blocking sport utility vehicles.
Actually, the administration may be on to something. Government — especially Republican government — is loath to do anything to disrupt the serenity of constituents unless that serenity will be disturbed even more by not doing anything.
Another few years of doing nothing will hasten the day when the streetcar makes its comeback.
Phillynews.com
December 10, 2004
IF WE weren’t so personally familiar with SEPTA, if we didn’t ride the El or the R-5, catch the C Bus or hop on Broad Street subway, we’d be right there in the cow fields with those rural Pennsylvania legislators, tsk-tsk-ing and shaking our heads in disbelief.
“What a inept joke of agency,” they probably thought after word got out that the transit agency fired a contractor on the $567 million Market-Frankford El reconstruction project, an endeavor that’s already two years behind and has turned Market Street between 46th and 63rd streets into a junky thoroughfare of near desolation.
The dismissal was no surprise. SEPTA and PKF Mark III, Inc., of Newtown, have butted heads since the construction firm got the contract in 2001 to refurbish the line from 63rd Street to Upper Darby.
SEPTA claims the company wanted to use steel that didn’t meet specifications. Plus, PKF Mark III was 700 days behind schedule.
PKF Mark III says SEPTA kept interfering with the project. Frustrated, PKF Mark III, which had worked as a subcontractor on SEPTA’s Frankford Terminal project, filed a lawsuit in October to get out of its $74 million contract.
SEPTA’s goal is to still have the whole project - work continues from 63rd Street to 46th - completed by 2008. We doubt it. Though paid for with federal money (thank goodness) and not affected by SEPTA’s $63 million budget crisis and possible layoffs, service cuts and fare increases, the project still must be rebid.
PKF Mark III Inc.’s firing could be seen as another in a line of SEPTA screw-ups. But the action is so desperate, we believe SEPTA’s argument.
About that budget mess, we’re glad Gov. Rendell finally has taken a proactive, governor-like step by asking to meet with U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta next week.
Aside from offering ways SEPTA can be helped, Mineta can explain whether a proposal to use federal highway money to help temporarily fill SEPTA’s budget shortfall is legal. It’s a proposal GOP lawmakers have hounded Rendell to consider.
And now members of the House GOP want to meet with SEPTA officials, maybe even go on a little tour. Here’s an idea: Get them on a bus or El; let them come face to face with the hard-working people who need SEPTA.
Los Angeles Times
December 10, 2004
Attorneys for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. said Thursday that they had settled about 40 lawsuits and were working to resolve 84 others filed on behalf of passengers who were killed or injured in an April 2002 collision between one of its freight trains and a Metrolink commuter train.
“Burlington, of course, feels badly about the whole thing, and they want people to be fairly and adequately compensated,” said Los Angeles attorney Michael Larin, a day after the jury in the first case to go to trial awarded an injured passenger $8.9 million. “We’re working as diligently as we can to get through them.”
Attorneys for the railway and the plaintiffs disagreed about how the verdict would affect ongoing negotiations or any future jury awards.
Burlington attorneys, who said it was too early to say if they would appeal, said the injuries were different in each case and couldn’t be compared. But attorneys for several plaintiffs said the verdict showed that the railway and its insurance companies drastically underestimated fair compensation.
“Our case is a death case and therefore the largest in all of the field,” said Richard Bridgford, lawyer for Ann Kube, whose husband was killed in the wreck. “My feeling is that our case is clearly worth more,” he said.
Kube, 53, said the verdict sends a message to Burlington about safety and accountability. “I’m very pleased this amount of money was awarded,” the Moreno Valley resident said. “I think it’s important for the public to realize that Burlington is a large company that doesn’t care about the safety of the people. Otherwise, they would have taken precautions,” she said.
More than 150 claims, some of which were resolved or dropped, were originally filed by passengers or their relatives after a mile-long train of 67 Burlington freight cars crashed head-on into a double-decker Metrolink train in Placentia during morning rush hour April 23, 2002. Three people were killed, and more than 260 were injured.
Federal investigators concluded last year that the accident was caused by an inattentive Burlington Northern crew that missed a warning signal and the lack of an automatic braking system on the freight train.
The lawsuits allege that the braking system, long sought by the Federal Railroad Administration, could have prevented the collision. The lawsuits also allege that the crew was fatigued from overwork and that the conductor had a history of losing track of signals.
Terms of the settled cases are confidential. Of the 84 cases in mediation, four are set for trial, and 15 to 20 others are scheduled for settlement negotiations within the next two months, Larin said.
Metrolink remains a defendant in the 84 pending cases but “was not at fault here,” he said, adding that Burlington continues to “be clear about the fact they admit fault.”
“There may be a few cases where Metrolink remains a defendant, but we’re not sure,” Larin said.
After a monthlong trial and two days of deliberations, an Orange County jury awarded Pamela Macek, a Riverside 53-year-old mother of three, nearly $9 million — mostly for psychological injuries. She was on her way to work as chief financial officer for Arrow Industries, riding in the front Metrolink car. Her cheekbones and upper jaw were shattered, and she had surgery for her face and back. Her attorneys also argued that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and cannot return to work.
Metrolink was dismissed as a defendant in her case, and she waived punitive damages. Her case could not be settled, Burlington attorneys said, because of a dispute over how preexisting medical conditions factored into the state of her overall health after the accident. And because Burlington Northern admitted responsibility before Macek’s trial, at issue was the extent of her injuries and the damages.
Macek was awarded $7.5 million for pain and suffering, $900,000 for past and future wage losses, and $500,000 for medical bills. That amount is about twice what the railroad offered before trial, her attorneys said. “It was a little higher than we expected,” said attorney Norman J. Watkins, who represented Burlington in the case. At the same time, Watkins said, Macek was one of the most severely injured passengers and had more than $1 million in medical costs and lost wages.
Burlington attorneys said the Macek award’s effect is difficult to determine because the extent and nature of injuries are different for each person. And any cases that go to trial would also have different juries. “These cases turn largely on the individual injuries and the nature and extent of the injuries,” Watkins said. “And those are unique to every plaintiff. Any effect [of the Macek verdict] would not be substantial on other cases, from my perspective.”
But Bridgford, who is representing Kube and her two daughters, said his clients and others are potentially eligible for even higher awards because they have not waived punitive damages, which punish defendants for malice, fraud or negligence, and go beyond compensation sought for property damage, loss of wages, and physical or psychological injuries.
Burlington has made an offer that doesn’t “even come close to approaching the loss my clients are suffering,” he said.
Attorney Kevin Boyle, whose firm represents five plaintiffs including the family of Larry Sorensen of Pedley, who died of blunt trauma, agreed that potential punitive damages, which they are pursuing, could prove costly. Burlington wants plaintiffs to waive punitive damages “so there would be no evidence about how devastating the crash was,” he said. “So I think this verdict shows that people recognize this was a traumatic event, and it bodes well for remaining victims.”
The Boston Globe
December 10, 2004
Huge cost overruns. Tunnel leaks. Multimillion-dollar lawsuits. Big trouble for the companies managing Boston’s Big Dig? Not really.
Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco and Parsons Brinckerhoff of New York are winning new contracts across the nation and around the world despite the project’s widely publicized problems. Within the past few months, Parsons Brinckerhoff has landed an $11 million transit contract in Seattle, been recommended for another transit contract of up to $84 million in Miami and was selected to design a $1.9 billion bridge spanning the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana.
Also this week, the Washington State Transportation Department proposed a tunnel to replace an aging elevated highway in Seattle. Parsons Brinckerhoff will conduct an environmental study of the proposal under a 2001 contract.
Bechtel, meanwhile is coming off a year of record revenue, $16.3 billion, and near-record bookings of new jobs, valued at $21 billion, according to the company. Earlier this month, Bechtel won contracts, with a combined value of more than $1 billion, to build a natural gas processing plant in the United Arab Emirates and do the preliminary design and engineering of a liquid natural gas plant in Nigeria.
Construction industry specialists say it’s not surprising that Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff keep getting contracts, despite the uproar generated by recent revelations that the $14.6 billion Central Artery/Tunnel project, scheduled to be completed in 2005, has hundreds of leaks that may take years to repair and cost millions of dollars. A key reason: few other companies are big enough to tackle the large and complex projects in which these firms specialize.
Joel Levington, a construction industry analyst at Standard & Poor’s, estimates that just 20 firms in the United States have the capacity for such projects, meaning that the same companies tend to win the contracts. Before beginning the Big Dig, for example, Bechtel was building the “Chunnel,” the tunnel connecting the United Kingdom and France across the English Channel, and before that, in another joint venture with Parsons Brinckerhoff, San Francisco’s BART subway and light rail system.
“The companies that do big projects expose themselves to big risks, and they need size, debt capacity, people, and technical expertise,” Levington said. “A company with 20 employees can’t do the Big Dig.”
In Miami, where a selection panel recently recommended a team led by Parsons Brinckerhoff for a contract of up to $84 million to support a transit system expansion, the firm’s performance in the Big Dig was thoroughly vetted, said Carlos Bonzon, assistant manager of Miami-Dade County. Parsons Brinckerhoff provided a detailed rebuttal of concerns raised in a report by the county’s inspector general, including an accounting of how inflation and project changes approved by Massachusetts official boosted the Big Dig’s cost from the the state’s original $2.6 billion estimate in 1982, to the current $14.6 billion.
Bonzon added that Parsons Brinckerhoff had performed well on previous projects in Miami-Dade, but ultimately won the new contract by promising not to assign any staff from the Big Dig, as well as controversial transit projects in St. Louis and Los Angeles, to the Miami work. “The key is always the people they assign to the project and who is going to be the project manager,” Bonzon said. He added, “I’ve been in this business for almost 40 years and I don’t know of any contractor who hasn’t had a problem here or there.”
Bonzon’s attitude is shared by other construction specialists, who say its not unusual for complex projects to cost more than estimates and entail problems and mistakes. A 2002 study of megaprojects funded by the Danish government found that 90 percent of such projects experienced cost overruns, averaging 45 percent over estimates for rail projects; 34 percent for tunnels and bridges; and 20 percent for roads. The Big Dig was not part of the study.
Al Hauck, head of the construction management department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., said big civil engineering projects entail so many unkowns, such as soil conditions below the surface, that it is difficult to predict costs before ground is broken. And the more complex the project, the more unknowns are involved, he said.
Chris Swan, the chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at Tufts University, described the challenge this way: “I can make concrete and I can make steel, and I know their properties. But when you’re dealing with the earth, you didn’t make it, and you can’t be sure of its properties.”
Bechtel is the among the world’s biggest construction companies, with a reach that extends well beyond roads, tunnels, and bridges to include power plants, airports, and wireless networks. The company is rebuilding Iraq, developing a depository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and cleaning up radioactive and chemical waste at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, where plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons.
Engineering News-Record, a leading trade publication, ranks Bechtel as the nation’s biggest contractor, and the fifth-largest global contractor. The firm, privately owned, is also the nation’s fifth-biggest design firm and sixth-biggest construction manager, with combined 2003 revenue nearly twice that of its nearest US competitor, KBR of Houston, according to Engineering News-Record.
Parsons Brinckerhoff, meanwhile, ranks as the nation’s second-biggest construction manager, and 11th-biggest design firm, according to Engineering News-Record. Parsons Brinckerhoff, also closely held, reported 2003 revenue of nearly $1.4 billion a 7 percent increase from the previous year.
In addition to size, industry specialists say both companies are aided by a long and distinguished history, and technical accomplishments few firms can match.
Bechtel’s early megaproject was the Hoover Dam, which, when construction started in 1931, was the biggest civil engineering project in US history. Parsons Brinckerhoff’s heritage includes designing New York’s first subway line, laying out the Cape Cod Canal, and designing the tunnel that connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River.
In Kentucky, state transportation officials cited Parsons Brinckerhoff’s well-established technical credentials in selecting it to design the Ohio River bridge. Michael Goins, spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, said the Big Dig controversy was considered during the selection process, but added state law prohibits officials from discussing the deliberations until final contract negotiations, still underway, are completed.
Spokesmen for Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff say their clients and many prospective clients understand the challenges of big projects, and that has helped them weather the storm.
Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
December 10, 2004
COTA’s endangered light-rail plans overcame one hurdle yesterday and smacked head-on into another one.
The Central Ohio Transit Authority asked the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission to help it borrow up to $4 million to complete an environmental study for the proposed light-rail line that would connect Downtown and Polaris. MORPC complied yesterday, agreeing to back a state loan that should be enough for COTA to finish the study by next fall.
But COTA learned Wednesday that the Federal Transit Administration plans to withdraw its recommendation that the federal government pay half the rail line’s $545 million cost if COTA could come up with state and local matching money.
Six times since officials began planning for light rail, COTA has opted not to ask voters for a sales tax to pay for the idea. Without a sales-tax increase to raise the estimated $136 million local share, the federal agancy will formally withdraw its recommended rating in February. “Without local funding, the project will not go forward,” COTA President and Chief Executive William Lhota told MORPC yesterday.
And COTA won’t put a sales tax before voters until at least 2006, he said afterward. Most recently, COTA wanted a spring 2005 levy. But Lhota ruled out any chance of a levy next year and wouldn’t speculate on when COTA might ask for a sales-tax increase. It must regain its financial footing and regain public confidence first, he said.
COTA is facing a $1.5 million deficit this year, negotiating a new union contract and trying to cut costs. Twice this fall, COTA withdrew requests for loans to keep the light-rail studies going because Lhota said he didn’t want COTA to take on debt. Lhota said COTA remains committed to light rail. “We would not be asking for $4 million if we were pulling the plug on light rail,” he said.
MORPC Chairman Ike Stage urged commissioners to approve the loan, noting that COTA has already spent nearly $9 million in state and federal dollars on preliminary light-rail studies. “We’ve got a significant investment,” he said. “That becomes the rationale in not stopping the project.”
After COTA withdrew earlier funding requests, local transit advocates feared that COTA was preparing to shelve light-rail plans. COTA’s request yesterday came after officials from the Ohio Department of Transportation and MORPC reworked loan terms to guarantee that COTA would not carry the debt on its books.
“That is wonderful,” said Dominic Liberatore of the Ohio Association of Rail Passengers. “It shows that COTA is dedicated to creating a multimodal transportation system in central Ohio.”
The federal agency could move COTA back to recommended status quickly if voters approve a levy, transit proponents say. Some local groups say they’re ready to work for a levy when one is scheduled.
“It’s an unfortunate situation we’re in, but if there’s any possibility to move forward to secure local funding, 1000 Friends of Central Ohio will be at the forefront to do that,” said Marilyn Baker, executive director of a local land-use planning advocacy group.
dgebolys@dispatch.com
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
December 10, 2004
The Port Authority approved a $4.5 billion spending plan Thursday for 2005 that includes the purchase of new PATH cars, construction of a transportation hub at Ground Zero and renovations to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport.
No tolls or fares will be increased at the Hudson River crossings to fund the plan.
However, the “passenger facility charge” tacked onto the cost of an airline ticket will be increased 50 percent, to $4.50, for departing passengers at Newark Liberty, Kennedy International and La Guardia airports.
The increased charge, which will take effect in July pending approval of the Federal Aviation Administration, will bring in $194 million next year, up from $110 million in 2004. The money can only be used for improvements at the airports, under federal guidelines. Nationwide, 130 airports have $4.50 passenger facility charges.
“The increase in the PFC charge we think is a sound investment for the region,” said Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. “We’ve managed our business where we can accommodate our capital plan for 2005 with the revenue sources we have today.”
The agency expects to take in close to $3 billion during 2005, more than half of which will come from its three major airports. Bridges and tunnels will bring in $752 million, with seaport commerce adding $152 million.
Operating expenses will cost the agency $2.1 billion in 2005, up less than 1 percent from 2004. Debt payments will total $609 million, on arrears of nearly $9 billion.
The capital program - money spent on upgrades to the Port Authority installations - totals $1.7 billion in 2005, a 27 percent jump from 2004.
Big ticket items include:
* $31.5 million toward the purchase of 246 new PATH cars and the rehabilitation of 94 existing cars.
* $20.3 million for a new PATH fare collection system that will accept smart cards.
* $40 million toward a new terminal for Jet Blue at Kennedy International.
* $17 million to start the modernization of Terminal B at Newark Liberty.
* $15 million toward construction of a permanent PATH station at the World Trade Center site.
* $10.3 million to build three hangars at Teterboro Airport.
In addition, $24 million will be spent on an NJ Transit rail spur to the Meadowlands, a $150 million project that the Port Authority is funding. “This region is fundamental to the nation,” Coscia said. “We feel as though infrastructure investments to keep the region running and security investments to keep it safe and secure are a national priority.”
The Dispatch
December 10, 2004
The long-awaited traffic light project in front of Gilroy Foods got a final blessing from the Valley Transportation Authority Thursday, clearing the way for road work to begin next May.
The VTA will award a bid for the project within the next 30 days, said Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, who is also chairman of the VTA Board of Directors.
Route 152 will be widened from just west of Gilroy Foods to Llagas Creek. The bridge crossing the creek will be widened to accommodate the road, but the centerpiece of the project is a much-needed signal in front of Gilroy’s largest employer. The east entrance will be aligned with the Westside Transport Inc. entrance across the highway. Turn lanes will be added for both businesses. Work should be complete by the end of 2006.
Meanwhile, the widely rumored ouster of VTA General Manager Pete Cipolla didn’t occur during Thursday’s closed session, but the rift between the five San Jose representatives and other members of the board was obvious during a public hearing.
San Jose officials are resisting calls to study alternatives to a planned BART extension through downtown San Jose to Santa Clara. As it stands, that project has at least a $ 2 billion funding shortfall, and on Tuesday, county supervisors voted to ask the VTA to study the economic impacts of a less ambitious BART project.
That proposal was greeted passionately by San Jose Councilman and VTA Director Forrest Williams. “I know it’s easier to do less, and I know times are hard, but, my God, we have the ability to do what we said we would do,” Williams said. “Let’s work as a team. Let’s pull our shoulders together, hook up the harness and pull this wagon.”
San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales used a procedural maneuver to delay the proposal. In the end, the board voted 11 to 1 — with Williams dissenting — to compel VTA staff to study the feasibility of studying alternate BART projects.
The full BART project was nudged forward with the acceptance of an environmental impact report by a vote of 11 to 1. The lone dissenter was Los Altos Mayor David Casas, who said that the VTA’s EIR is based on “dubious” projections. “We need to have more due diligence around modeling,” Casas said after the meeting. “The projections need to be revised to a great extent. The environmental justice benefit is misguided.”
According to the EIR, a San Jose BART line will be used by 84,000 riders daily, attract a large number of minority passengers and draw from a substantial pool of riders from below the poverty line who live in the proposed BART corridor. “I don’t think people living below the poverty level are going to use BART,” Casas said. “Cost is an issue.”
The EIR allows the VTA to move forward, but doesn’t hold the agency to any particular project. If the VTA eventually decides to scale back the BART project, it will conduct another EIR.
The VTA board also voted to postpone until February accepting a draft of the agency’s Valley Transportation Plan 2030, a master transit plan for the entire region which it must submit to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
December 10, 2004
A $10 million budget increase for the Mission Valley East extension of the San Diego Trolley has pushed the bottom line of the project to $506 million, although transit officials say the new expenses come as no surprise.
Officials said yesterday the increases stem mainly from contractor claims, a decision to upgrade the fire suppression system in a tunnel underneath San Diego State University, and an overly conservative estimate for the cost of insurance.
Combined with earlier increases and cost overruns on the trolley extension, the new costs take Mission Valley East $75 million, or 17 percent, above the original $431 million budget approved in June 2000.
The Metropolitan Transit System board of directors approved the budget hike unanimously and without comment yesterday. The money is expected to be drawn from a federal transportation program for air-quality improvements, funds managed by the San Diego Association of Governments.
Transit board chairman Leon Williams said the agency knew the increases were coming but decided not to load them into the project budget until absolutely necessary. “We didn’t want to put out any hope that we had more money than we had,” Williams said. “We knew that we were going to encounter these additional costs. We didn’t want to give anybody incentive to push harder for more money.”
The 5.8-mile trolley extension is the largest and most complex transportation project ever undertaken in the region. It will connect the Mission San Diego station to the existing line through La Mesa, with four new stations, including the underground one at SDSU. It is expected to add 11,000 new riders daily to the trolley system after it opens in mid-2005.
Construction is 94 percent complete.
In April 2003, the transit agency approved a $35 million increase in the project, partly to cover higher costs for construction management and working on the SDSU campus.
Jim Linthicum, director of transit engineering and construction for the San Diego Association of Governments, said Metropolitan Transit decided then not to add money for contractor claims and other project contingencies, even though it was considered likely to be needed later.
With the project nearly complete, officials now have a better idea how those costs will add up and the extent to which the agency needs to replenish its contingency reserve.
Linthicum said claims from one of the four main contractors, Balfour Beatty/Ortiz, total $6 million. The contractor, responsible for the La Mesa segment of the project, has filed 42 potential claims against Metropolitan Transit for increased costs and time. Many claims argue that the company was unable to proceed with its work as originally bid because of unforeseen obstacles.
Linthicum said the claims far exceed those of other contractors, and some will be negotiated or disputed, so yesterday’s adjustment doesn’t include a specific sum to settle the matters. There’s also a chance the agency will seek damages from the company for construction delays, he said.
Costs for the 4,000-foot SDSU tunnel increased more than $3 million, partly because of discussions with fire officials that ended in a decision to add backup systems to supply water and suppress fires.
Metropolitan Transit bought and controlled insurance for all its contractors instead of being billed by them individually. Linthicum said estimates of labor hours used in trolley construction proved too conservative, leading to a $3 million increase in insurance costs. The move to an owner-controlled insurance program still is expected to save a net $2.4 million, he said.
After the 2003 round of increases, transit board members decided to keep a closer eye on the project and have been updated monthly in their executive-committee meetings. They also added a layer of review for construction change orders and replaced a construction-management consultant with in-house staff.
The extra $10 million needed to balance the books and complete the project will come from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program, typically used to promote transit and reduce pollution.
Xinhua General News Service
December 10, 2004
Beijing’s efforts to ease its increasing traffic pressure have begun to pay off, said a municipal government official here on Friday. “Despite the sharp increase of cars, Beijing’s traffic is making steady progress this year thanks to various measures the government has taken,” Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Communication Committee, told a press conference.
According to the statistics from the Beijing Transportation Management Bureau, the motor vehicles in Beijing reached 2.27 million by the end of November, with privately-owned cars accounting for about 60 per cent. “Less traffic congestions take place this year in areas like CBD and Xuanwumen which were previously notorious for traffic jams, “ said Liu.
A total of 43 new roadways were built this year and the total length reached 102.6 kilometers. The government also built dozens of overpasses and adjusted the routes of some buses, making the citizens’ travel more convenient and enhancing the efficiency of public transport.
Traffic is widely viewed as one of the biggest challenges facing Beijing when it hosts the Olympic Games in 2008. In 2002, Beijing recorded a total of 16,789 traffic jams, with the “rush hour” actually consuming 11 hours of each day.
Liu said the traffic problem is an integral part of the entire process of the city’s development, blaming irrational city planning, the soaring number of private cars, malpractice and people’s lack of awareness of obeying the traffic regulations. “Every super-big city in the world suffers from traffic jams. Beijing is no exception, but we are making efforts to solve it,” he said.
Although private cars have been blamed for traffic jams in Beijing, the municipal government has said repeatedly that it does not plan to restrict the number of private cars. “At present, we do not have this kind of plans. But we will take measures aimed at curbing the use of private cars,” said Liu.
According to Beijing’s future urban transport development program, the city will build some parking lots around urban areas, which will help those private car owners change to public transport to their work place in downtown areas.
Beijing will continue to give priorities to the development of public transportation system in the future, said Liu. “Foreign experiences have proved that giving priorities to the urban public transport development will not only help ease urban traffic jams, but also improve the urban living environment,” he said.
Construction of three metro line projects, namely Loop 4, Loop 5 and Loop 10, with a combined length of 88.46 kilometers, are well under way in the city. They will for sure alleviate the ground traffic pressure of Beijing during the 2008 Olympics period.
In addition, by 2010, 75 per cent of Beijing’s major roadways and some expressways will open special public traffic lines, with the total length increasing from the current 93 kilometers to over 300 kilometers. “Our goal is to enhance the proportion of public transport to all means of transport to over 50 per cent by 2008 from the current 26.5 per cent,” said Liu.
The Nation (Thailand)
December 10, 2004
Security forces in the deep South were yesterday placed on red alert to protect south-bound trains, enabling services to resume hours after three early morning bomb explosions in Songkhla, Yala and Pattani that caused minor damage to the tracks but no casualties.
Security details will be on board every train and advance security teams will make checks of the track before the passing of every train, southern security commander General Sirichai Thunyasiri said. Every engine carriage will be installed with a transparent armour shield to protect it from gunfire.
The security blanket covers all tracks between Hat Yai and the border with Malaysia.
The three bombs, which went off within minutes of each other, caused relatively minor physical damage but had sapped the morale of passengers and railway workers, said Chitsanti Dhanasobhon, governor of the State Railways of Thailand.
The increased security is meant to ensure safety as well as signalling our determination to provide train services despite the violence, he said.
Chitsanti said he believed the three home-made bombs were planted to attack passenger trains but went off prematurely after track inspection cars ran over and detonated them.
The first explosion occurred at 6.15am on the tracks about two kilometres from Chana station in Songkhla. Six Border Patrol Police officers and two railway workers were travelling on the hand-operated inspection car that triggered the detonation. The bomb used ammonium nitrate, commonly found in urea fertiliser, as explosive and caused a crater about half a metre across.
The inspection cars passengers managed to jump off without injury. They opened fire on some moving targets in nearby bushes that they suspected to be the militants who planted the bomb.
The second bomb exploded near a remote track in Pattanis Khok Pho district at around 6.20am. The bomb was similar to the one in Songkhla but was planted near the tracks and caused no damage to the line.
The third bomb detonated at 6.35am in Yalas Raman district, minutes after a track inspection car passed over it. Three railway workers escaped unharmed but the track, linking Raman with Pattanis Mai Kaen district, was slightly damaged.
Train services were halted following the blasts but resumed around 9am after the militarys intervention to tighten security.
The railway labour union issued a statement calling for increased security for train services.
The statement recounted a number of terror attacks targeted at trains and railway workers, including the shooting of two workers in Narathiwat last month, the spraying of bullets at an express train on Wednesday and yesterdays three explosions.
MP says hell quit
Democrat Party MP Thanin Jaisamut yesterday vowed to quit politics if it were proved that a video of the Tak Bai incident he had played during an election campaign had been doctored.
Thanin was responding to charges by the government that some opposition MPs had doctored the original scenes on the Tak Bai videos to tarnish the government over the violent crackdown on Muslim protesters. Thanin said he had bought the VCD from a local TV station. He then played it to political supporters during a rally. I promise to leave politics if it depicted scenes that had not actually happened, Thanin said.
Thanin said he suspected that the death toll from the Tak Bai incident could be much higher than the 85 reported by the government. He added that he had not intended to use the video to create divisions but he wanted the truth to be known. If the government sees that I am doing anything inappropriate it can take action against me, Thanin said. Earlier yesterday, Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula said he had received reports politicians had edited a video of the Tak Bai incident to make the government and Thai Rak Thai look bad in the eyes of Muslims.