Amtrak
Amtrak and dozens of major industry partners representing construction, manufacturing, rail supply, engineering, and other sectors recently convened for an industry roundtable to discuss trends and highlight the hundreds of major rebuilding projects that Amtrak and its partners are delivering across America, today and into the future. These partners, who are helping to deliver many of Amtrak’s biggest projects, together represent more than 100,000 American workers from all 50 states, according to Amtrak.
With new investments, Amtrak says it is transforming into a “modern and efficient intercity passenger rail operator achieving historic ridership demands while leading an innovative construction arm that leverages industry expertise to safely and efficiently deliver quality assets.” After investing $4.5 billion into major infrastructure and fleet projects last year, Amtrak says it plans to increase its capital investments by 50% in 2025.
“America deserves world-class infrastructure, and here at Amtrak we are doing our part,” said Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner. “We’re leading a strong American workforce and private-sector partners in building new bridges, tunnels, and trains to help meet the historic demand for intercity passenger rail and improve connections for millions of people in more than 500 cities, towns, and rural areas around the country.”
Amtrak’s new era of rail is replacing, upgrading, and repairing iconic century-old bridges, tunnels, stations, and other critical infrastructure assets. Highlights include:
- These structures date back to at least the early 1900s and were designed, built or opened primarily during the Presidencies of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft.
- Amtrak is also replacing a majority of its train fleet, which serves 500+ communities in 46 states and today averages nearly 40 years old, with some equipment dating back to Amtrak’s creation in 1971.
- Collectively, these transformative projects, Amtrak says, “are creating the largest boom in rail construction in company history, putting hundreds of thousands of skilled Americans to work and jump-starting American manufacturing like never before in company history.”
As Amtrak ramps up its capital program, the company says it has continued its commitment to buy American products, with 99% of procurements domestically based in Fiscal Year 2024.
Amtrak says it is making progress on huge projects across multiple portfolios, thanks to strong partnerships with the private sector:
- Introducing new state-of-the-art trains across the country, including 111 modern trainsets and 125 high-powered locomotives in production, as well as an upcoming contract award to replace hundreds of Long-Distance railcars.
- Building new bridges and tunnels that will remove major bottlenecks, including breaking ground on a megaproject to replace the 151-year-old B&P Tunnel, which opened when America’s 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, was in office.
- Advancing the company’s biggest-ever station improvement program, improving accessibility at 380+ stations across the National Network, as well as restoring several major stations to their original glory.
In addition to major, “once-in-a-generation projects,” Amtrak says it is also conducting important annual renewal work through its state-of-good repair program, which maintains tracks, signals, power, and other important rail systems.
Participants included AECOM, Alstom, Clark Construction Group, The Coalition for the NEC, Herzog, HNTB Corporation, Jacobs, Kiewit, Loram, Parsons Corporation, PennFab, Railroad Construction Company (RCC), Siemens, Skanska, STV, voestalpine Railway Systems Nortrak, Vossloh North America, Wabtec, and WSP USA, among others.
REM
Jean-Marc Arbaud, Head of CDPQ Infra, the company overseeing the construction of the REM, says the north and west branches of the project will be up and running by October 2025, according to a CBC News report.
According to the report, Arbaud said in an interview with Radio-Canada that trains will begin running between Deux-Montagnes, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and downtown Montreal in March or April for testing.
Later, in the summer, that testing will see the whole network shut down for six weeks, a CDPQ Infra spokesperson said on Thursday, according to the CBC News report.
Once that’s complete, trains should begin carrying passengers along the entire REM route—except for the link to the airport—in October.
According to the report, Arbaud said the airport link is “on track for the end of 2027.” He said that the airport station is out of the control of CDPQ Infra because Aéroports de Montréal, the corporation in charge of the airport, is building it.
According to the report, Arbaud said the project needs about 100,000 travelers per day to be financially viable, and in order to get there, the REM will have to be “reliable and fast.” Arbaud said he knows it will be “competitive— or faster—than the current time it takes a car to drive from one of the station’s endpoints to downtown Montreal.”
He also said they are working on reliability. So far, snow has caused some problems. Since Dec. 1, the South Shore REM branch has had nine interruptions of 20 minutes or more, including three shutdowns within 24 hours at the beginning of February, according to the CBC News report.
“That’s the last point we have to sort out if we are to provide a service that passengers have every right to expect,” Arbaud said. “All our contractors are well aware of this, and we monitor it on a daily basis.”
According to the report, the cost of the REM has climbed from $7 billion estimated in 2018 to now $9.4 billion. But Arbaud noted that the cost is “actually about half or a third of other major public transit projects in the rest of Canada.”
OC Transpo
Members of the newly renamed Transit Committee met on Feb. 13 to receive an overview of the first four weeks of O-Train Lines 2 and 4 service, updates on 2024 ridership, and ongoing efforts to expand OC Transpo’s electric bus fleet including facility upgrades.
O-Train Lines 2 and 4 launched with weekday service on Monday, Jan. 6, and expanded to six-day service on January 25. In the first four weeks of service, more than 300,000 customer trips were taken on Lines 2 and 4, according to the Committee. Park and Ride usage has been high with significant capacity remaining for customers across all three lots at Greenboro, Leitrim, and Bowesville stations. Before launching seven-day service, work will continue to focus on customer information systems, closing out remaining minor works, and training activities to grow Diesel Rail Operator availability.
The Transit Committee learned that year-over-year, ridership increased by seven per cent in 2024 with 67.9 million customer trips. Improvements have been made to the reliability of Line 1 rail service, reaching 98.8 per cent service delivery in 2024. In 2024, the 12-month average bus service delivery was 98 per cent. Para Transpo ridership was more than 856,000 customer trips, which is 14 per cent higher than 2023.
The Committee learned that in 2024, Transit, the recommended app for OC Transpo customers, saw more than 71,000 downloads, over 113,000 average users per month, and more than 21 million trips planned.
