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Well, some good news. After a drawn negotiation process and some months after the new station was mostly completed, Amtrak has signed the lease agreement for the new Niagara Falls station. Mass Transit Magazine: NY: Amtrak and Niagara Falls Reach Agreement on Train Station. Excerpts:

On the Sacramento Measure B, found this public radio report describing the mail-in ballot situation: UPDATES: Sacramento County, City Measures Falling Short Of Passage. As of Nov. 9, the yes votes for Measure B are at 64.8%, short of 2/3rds needed. But there are a LOT of votes to be counted...

Well, there is good news for the Atlanta and Seattle referendums and appears that the LA Measure M will pass. Those are the 3 major ones that should turn those cities & metro regions over the next several decades into ones with extensive transit systems. In the case of Seattle and LA, could make...

The Michigan track work for the season has been completed and the Wolverine service is back to 3 daily trains. Amtrak news release: FULL MICHIGAN AMTRAK SERVICE RESTORED. Presumably there will be another extended season of track and grade crossing work in 2017. But in the meantime, perhaps the...

The topic title should be fixed as the September report is the last month of FY2016, not FY-15. I suggest the moderators change it to a more descriptive title of "September 2016 Monthly Performance Report, final month of FY2016 is out". Initial comments on and numbers in the September 2016...

The New York Times posted an editorial on October 29 on the large number of local transportation and transit ballot referendums being voted on next week. It is not just a straight up editorial, provides a chart showing how federal funding for rail and mass transit has stalled out, so local and...

Who ever wrote the IDOT news release may be splitting hairs on the "completion" of the station project or how the Normal station was funded for a headline calling it the first new station to get more attention. Checking the Chicago - St. Louis IDOT website, the webpage for Station Improvements...

Getting back to new/re-built stations that Amtrak is using, news from last week. Progressive Railroading: Illinois DOT opens first new station on Chicago-St. Louis higher-speed route. Excerpt:

According to trainorders, the dining car that is being moved to Albany is 68001 Annapolis. This is the second diner car in the production sequence. 68000 Albany was the initial Viewliner II diner car that was sent out twice previously for testing. Shots of the exterior will not reveal much...

Why would ridership surveys cost that much? Amtrak, as any transportation business would, does passenger surveys from time to time. Amtrak certainly knows where most of the passengers are coming from, since the vast majority of tickets are likely paid for with debit and credit cards, so they can...

Why would Amtrak need additional equipment to serve MIC? Setting aside Sanford for the AutoTrain, Miami/Hialeah is only Amtrak's 4th busiest station in Florida after Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville with 70.5K passengers in FY2015. That indicates that the Star and Meteor are not very full arriving...

News on the completion of 2 projects for the Piedmont corridor. Progressive Railroading: NCDOT wraps up two Piedmont rail improvement projects. Excerpts: With the 2016 construction season winding down for much of the US, we could see a bunch of announcements in the next month or so about the...

News on a long planned station improvement project that had no news for years that I can recall. Progressive Railroading: PennDOT kicks off Mount Joy rail station project, Three years to complete???

The insurance cap was $200 million when the accident occurred. Congress retroactively raised the limit to $295 million after the accident. If Amtrak's insurance payout limit was $200 million, they may be paying the $65 million difference out of pocket or stripping funds from elsewhere.

Besides the fact that Amtrak is effectively owned by the federal government and leaving aside that TSA and DHS have more legal authority than you might like, Amtrak does not own DC Union Station. The US DOT owns DC Union Station, so if one branch of the federal government wants to set up a test...

Link to the AASHTO Section 305 NGEC Executive Committee webpage. The meeting minutes are linked Word documents down the page. I have had to download the meeting minutes documents to read them.

Updates on the Siemmens Charger production from the October 11, 2016 draft minutes of the NGEC executive committee. The key info is that IDOT #4608 is ready to ship, so production is moving along. There is a lengthy section on issues that have arisen with insurance and indemnification for the...

Update for the Chicago - St. Louis corridor project: Link to a September 27, 2016 IDOT viewgraph presentation (~1.3 MB). The presentation is a useful summary of the project status, funding source & expenditure breakdown, track and grade crossing project segments. Synopsis: Even after this many...

The final delivery date on the contract has been extended to 306 months from contract award? :o Hmm. probably not.

Ouch! But true... :o The DC Metro is undergoing a system meltdown between the Safetracks work blitz, repeated breakdowns, repeated to do repair jobs correctly, a seriously dysfunctional organization, and a operating cash shortfall as bad as any major US transit system has seen in many years...