New Jersey is slugging it out with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and New York State and City transportation officials over a proposal to charge tolls for vehicles that enter Manhattan’s Central Business District, the Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP), a plan the New York MTA Board approved March 27. On March 28, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber…

Border disputes between states of the United States are often fought over issues like one state complaining that another state, located upstream from it, is taking too much water from the river that runs through them, and not leaving enough for the states further downstream. We are now looking at a “border dispute” of a different sort. New Jersey is…

The theory behind congestion pricing is that city streets are clogged with vehicles, and something should be done about it. Transit systems everywhere are in trouble, too. They need money to keep operating, an acute problem, about which we plan to report in a major series soon. At the same time, there is a chronic need for capital funds to…

The idea of charging motorists and truckers for the space that their vehicles occupy on city streets has been discussed for some time, but it could be implemented in New York City soon. That would make Manhattan the first place in the United States to carry out such a plan. Many city leaders in the United States and elsewhere around…

A new border dispute is erupting in the United States, and it’s nowhere near the Southern Border with Mexico. The combatants are New York and New Jersey, and the dispute has reached the courts on both sides of their border. For decades, longtime New Jersey passenger rail advocate Albert L. Papp has referred to the boundary line between the two…

The FRA recently came out with an interim report in its Long-Distance Rail Study, which was commissioned by Congress in §22214 of the Infrastructure Innovation and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) in 2021. My first report on the study started with some background and briefly described the 15 proposed routes, the sort of report…

Brightline made the official announcement on Monday. The site for the railroad’s new “Treasure Coast station” will be Stuart, a town located about 40 miles north of West Palm Beach.

On Feb. 21, I reported on 15 potential long-distance routes that Amtrak could operate someday, in theory, anyway. These routes resulted from a two-year evaluation and selection process sponsored by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which will be completed later this year. The suggested routes exceeded by one the number that Amtrak ran on its inaugural day of operation, May…

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which is looking toward adding more routes to the nation’s skeletal long-distance passenger train network, revealed the proposed new routes, many of which either ran before Amtrak was founded in 1971 or during Amtrak’s early days, or were discontinued at the time Amtrak took over intercity passenger trains, or even earlier. The FRA presented the…

How do you save a freight rail line when it loses its primary shipper? Many cycling enthusiasts will tell you to rip up the tracks and turn it into a bike trail, but Scott R. Spencer, Chief Operating Officer of AmeriStarRail, has a better idea. He suggests running passenger trains on the line and using connecting buses to bring tourists…

There will probably be a new rail transit line coming to the eastern part of Montreal, but it is years off. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently reported that the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM), the regional transit authority for the area, is “proposing a ground-level rail line to serve eastern Montreal.” It is unclear which mode the proposed…

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) held another hearing Feb. 14 about the slow pace of getting two Amtrak Gulf Coast Service passenger trains in each direction running between New Orleans and Mobile. It could have been the latest skirmish in what I have been calling the “Second Battle of Mobile” since coverage began two years ago. It also might have…

Railway Age recently reported on the proposed Sunshine Corridor in Central Florida, which is slated to connect Brightline’s newly opened northern terminal at Orlando Airport with points west and southwest in the Orlando area, interchange with local service on SunRail, and serve as part of an extension of Brightline to Tampa someday. The extension from West Palm Beach to Orlando…

Sixth and final of a series: During August and early September of 2023, I spent much of a five-week period on VIA Rail, riding that railroad’s obscure “Adventure” routes. I had made it as far west as eastern Saskatchewan on the way to VIA Rail’s northernmost terminal at Churchill, Manitoba. I rode classic “Budd cars” in northern Ontario and trains…

Jan. 18 was not a good day for Amtrak, on either end of the Lakes Shore Limited route, and in other places, too. Many Amtrak trains in the Midwest did not operate, and half of the Acela trains on the Northeast Corridor (NEC) were canceled, as well. Some trains elsewhere, like the Empire Builder, did not run, either. The delays…

Fifth in a Series: In the first four articles in this series, as well as in a separate article that focused on rail transit and tourist railroads in Canada, I described my adventures on rails during a 16-day journey to that country in August 2023. I had ridden VIA Rail trains from Toronto to Winnipeg and then to Churchill, Manitoba…

Downtown Miami Link (DTML), Tri-Rail’s connection into Brightline’s new Miami Central station, has been a long time in coming, and there have been some difficulties along the way, but service will start tomorrow: Saturday, Jan. 13. When Railway Age reported this development Jan. 8, Tri-Rail had not released the schedule. The railroad has now made it public. DTML will be…

PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK, RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2024 ISSUE: Charles Dickens began A Tale of Two Cities, his saga of the French Revolution, by saying: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...” That could also be said for Amtrak and rail transit in the U.S. for the upcoming year. I opened a similar article with…

To railroaders with active memories and to seniors like me who rode the great trains toward the end of the “Streamliner” Era, the Budd Company of Philadelphia has almost a magical historic presence. The great Budd-built streamlined equipment faded from American rails decades ago, but the cars the company built in 1954 for Canadian Pacific’s crack transcontinental train, the Canadian,…

Fourth in a Series: There was something special about the Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) built by the Budd Company in the middle of the past century. They were self-contained passenger cars (and some baggage cars, too) that ran on many railroads in Canada, the Northeastern United States and elsewhere. They had a unique “feel” as they rode, as well as…