Created Saturday 01 August 2020
See also: Transportation | Rail
Aisling Ní Chúláin - Updated: 13/08/2021 - 15:17
Picture this: the year is 2045. You’re standing on a platform in Berlin awaiting a sleek Hyperloop pod that will glide into the station to a noiseless halt and then deposit you in Paris an hour later, ready for your morning meeting.
In the afternoon, you’ll take another southbound pod on a leisurely trip to Barcelona for the weekend, a journey that will take no more than 90 minutes.
The speed and ease is no longer a surprise to you because in the last quarter-century, almost all travel throughout Europe has shifted from the skies to the ground.
Short-haul flights are nothing but a relic of a carbon-fuelled past.
The record-setting high-speed train went into service on this day 40 years ago.
Dhananjay Khadilkar - 9/27/2021, 11:45 AM
Every year, the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) weekend in September offers visitors a chance to visit numerous monuments all over Europe. Among the attractions in Paris this year was an orange-colored electric train with a name that has become a byword for speed and cutting-edge technology: the TGV. Thousands of enthusiasts flocked to the Gare de Lyon station to see the inaugural TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse), which was launched 40 years ago in September 1981.
Jacques Ruiz, one of the two drivers who piloted the first train 40 years ago, was at the Gare de Lyon station during the European Heritage Days weekend. “What impressed me most about the TGV was its aerodynamic design. The other locomotives, which looked like cubes, did not have such a shape. Of course, the power and the comfort of the air-conditioned cabin were impressive, too. It was exciting to drive this new train,” the 79-year-old said.
The first train was flagged off by the then French President François Mitterrand on September 22, 1981, and the first Paris-Lyon line was opened to the public five days later.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/09/the-train-that-shrunk-france-and-europe/
The record-setting high-speed train went into service on this day 40 years ago.
Dhananjay Khadilkar - 9/27/2021, 11:45 AM
Every year, the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) weekend in September offers visitors a chance to visit numerous monuments all over Europe. Among the attractions in Paris this year was an orange-colored electric train with a name that has become a byword for speed and cutting-edge technology: the TGV. Thousands of enthusiasts flocked to the Gare de Lyon station to see the inaugural TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse), which was launched 40 years ago in September 1981.
Jacques Ruiz, one of the two drivers who piloted the first train 40 years ago, was at the Gare de Lyon station during the European Heritage Days weekend. “What impressed me most about the TGV was its aerodynamic design. The other locomotives, which looked like cubes, did not have such a shape. Of course, the power and the comfort of the air-conditioned cabin were impressive, too. It was exciting to drive this new train,” the 79-year-old said.
The first train was flagged off by the then French President François Mitterrand on September 22, 1981, and the first Paris-Lyon line was opened to the public five days later.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/09/the-train-that-shrunk-france-and-europe/
A new analysis suggests the economics are close to breaking even.
John Timmer - 11/11/2021, 8:00 AM
With the rapid pace of development in electric vehicles, we will likely get to a place where eliminating carbon emissions from one form of transport is possible. But cleaning up the remaining major modes—planes, trains, and ships—appears to be considerably more challenging. A new analysis suggests we have a good idea of how to improve one of those.
The study, performed by California-based researchers, looks at the possibility of electrifying rail-based freight. It finds that the technology is pretty much ready, and under the right circumstances, the economics are on the verge of working out. Plus, putting giant batteries on freight cars has the potential to create some interesting side benefits.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/can-we-run-our-trains-using-big-batteries/
Featuring thousands of miles of abandoned railroad routes in North America, illustrated with maps, pictures, and history.
Start browsing abandoned routes by clicking on a state in the U.S. map below.
2022-06-11 - alon
A brief discussion on Reddit about my post criticizing Penn Station expansion plans led me to write a very long comment, which I’d like to hoist to a full post explaining how big an urban train station needs to be to serve regional and intercity rail traffic. The main principles are,
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2022/06/11/how-many-tracks-do-train-stations-need/
21 July 2022
Fluctuations in space weather are disrupting train signals and causing delays to train services, according to the results of a project investigating the effect of solar storms on railway signals that were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting last week by Cameron Patterson, a PhD student at Lancaster University.
The sun’s tendency to affect technology on Earth, as well as in space, is known as space weather. In railways, electric currents caused to flow in the earth by solar activity can interfere with the normal operation of signals, turning green signals to red even when there is no train nearby.
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/solar-flares-could-cause-delays-on-the-railways-56083/
What it’s really like to travel cross-country by rail.
Christine Mi - August 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
This summer, I was determined to take a train across the United States.
I started in Northern California, and over the course of 80 hours, 12 states and 3,397 miles, I meandered my way alongside deserts, forests, mountains, rivers; through coal plants, suburban backyards, vast cornfields, and the occasional Big American City — and ended in the very Biggest of them all, New York City.
This idea was not well-received among most of my friends.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/interactive/2024/amtrak-train-travel-diary/
Oscar Holland - 7:35 AM EDT, Fri October 11, 2024
On October 4, 1883, the legendary Orient Express departed Gare de l’Est in Paris for the very first time, slowly winding through Europe on its way to Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known. During a seven-day round trip, the service’s 40 passengers — including several prominent writers and dignitaries — lived in mahogany-paneled comfort, whiling away the hours in smoking compartments and armchairs upholstered in soft Spanish leather.
The most luxurious experience of them all, however, could be found in the dining car.
With a menu spanning oysters, chicken chasseur, turbot with green sauce and much else besides, the offering was so extravagant that part of a baggage car had to be repurposed to make space for an extra icebox containing food and alcohol. Served by impeccably dressed waiters, guests sipped from crystal goblets and ate from fine porcelain using silver cutlery. The restaurant’s interior was decorated with silk draperies, while artworks hung in the spaces between windows.
As newspaper correspondent Henri Opper de Blowitz, one of the maiden journey’s passengers, wrote: “The bright-white tablecloths and napkins, artistically and coquettishly folded by the sommeliers, the glittering glasses, the ruby red and topaz white wine, the crystal-clear water decanters and the silver capsules of the Champagne bottles — they blind the eyes of the public both inside and outside.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/11/style/europe-railroad-dining-cars-wagons-lits/index.html
2024-08-19 - blinry
Today, I get to start a train trip I’ve always wanted to do: Going from New York to San Francisco!!
This map shows that first section of the trip. I’m taking the “Lake Shore Limited”, an overnight train. Will arrive in Chicago in around 20 hours, and amazingly, that’s the only time I’ll have to change trains!
We’re first going north, following the Hudson river.
The seats are big and comfy! But the train seems to be booked out.
A train attendant asked everyone where they’d get off, and put little notes over our seats – probably to wake up people who have to get off in thr middle of the night.
A new report shows how Amtrak and commuter railroads can reduce “dead time” and increase speeds for less than it would cost to build new high-speed rail lines.
Benjamin Schneider - April 10, 2025 at 5:01 AM PDT
High-speed trains, zooming across the landscape at over 200 miles per hour, have long been a Holy Grail for US transportation advocates. Though projects are advancing in California, Nevada and Texas, progress has been arduous. Even in sparsely populated corners of the American West, from-scratch high-speed rail development is expensive, complex and politically fraught.
But brand-new bullet trains are not the only way to deliver faster passenger rail service. In regions with lots of older rail infrastructure, like the Northeast and Midwest, the existing tracks are full of untapped potential.
That’s the main finding of a new report by the NYU Marron Institute’s Transit Costs Project, authored by Marron Institute research fellow Nolan Hicks. The strategies outlined in the report, Hicks says, “can deliver a whole lot of what high-speed rail promises using the infrastructure we already have, and at costs that are reasonable for the value delivered in return.”
The lesser urbanism hack
Shaked Koplewitz - Jul 28, 2025
Small Train is Good Train
A while ago, I wrote about how elevated trains are the greatest urbanism cheat code, increasing the amount of track miles you can build per dollar (or per year) by a factor of 2-4. And while I don’t have anything else on that order of magnitude, I do have one more easy 20-50% gain1: Run shorter trains.
The basic idea is simple: The single biggest cost of any metro system is the stations, whose cost scales with size. Therefore, if we run a system for smaller trains, we can build smaller stations for these trains, saving a huge amount on station costs. This costs us in reduced total capacity, but this can easily be made up for by increasing train frequency.
https://shakeddown.substack.com/p/a-short-post-on-short-trains
Bill Schieder - October 24, 2023
Spikes in cargo theft, along with successful efforts to curb the trend, have hit the news cycle several times over the last couple of years. Starting as the pandemic was just beginning to throw a monkey wrench into the global supply chain and continuing through the most recent spike covering the last 7 months or so.
We’ve had more clients reaching out recently, concerned about their goods and asking for suggestions to help ensure their inventory gets to its destination. Read on to dive deeper into this phenomenon and learn how Flexport is working to mitigate losses for our customers.
https://www.flexport.com/blog/the-great-train-robbery-everything-we-know-so-far/
Daniel Xu has loved trains since he was a child. In a surprising twist of fate, he now lives above an extensive hobby train network set.
Aleisha Orr, Asha Abdi - 29 June 2025 1:28pm / Updated 30 June 2025 1:59pm
As any new homeowner will know, there are always unknown things to be found in a new place.
From a kitchen cupboard that never seems to close properly, a curiously painted over area or the real performance of an air-conditioning unit, discoveries abound.
But after Daniel Xu and his wife finalised the purchase of their house in Melbourne's northern suburbs, he found what can only be described as a train enthusiast's dream beneath their feet.
A new way of doing so uses magnetic signals in the tracks themselves
Sep 28th 2022
Stopping railway trains colliding requires knowing where they are. In olden days this was done by the handing over between driver and signalman of a token showing that a block of track was occupied. Now, automatic devices detect and report a train’s passage. But the principle is the same. Lines in a railway network are divided into blocks, and only one train at a time is allowed in a block.
Snowdrifts stranded the vehicle in the Sierra Nevada in January 1952, imprisoning 226 people traveling from Chicago to California
Robert Klara, History Correspondent - January 9, 2025
High inside locomotive 6019, engineer Tom Sapunor notched the throttle forward and squinted at the track ahead—not that he could see much of it. The blizzard that had barreled into the Sierra Nevada mountain range three days earlier had blanketed most everything, its 90-mile-per-hour gusts sweeping the snow into 25-foot drifts.
On a normal run, the Southern Pacific Railroad’s City of San Francisco train could whisk passengers from Chicago to San Francisco in 40 hours and 15 minutes. But this wasn’t a normal run, even by the standards of “the Hill,” the perilous trackage between Sparks, Nevada, and Roseville, California, whose high point stood 6,880 feet above sea level. The company’s advertising boasted that there was “no tougher stretch of railroad in the country”—a hard truth that the City’s 226 occupants were about to learn firsthand.
Near Yuba Pass in California, a snowdrift broadsided the train. As the City’s three locomotives struggled to burrow though, a second mass of snow—this one around 12 feet tall—struck the train and literally stopped it in its tracks. The diesel engines pulling the 15-car City cranked out a combined 6,750 horsepower. Sapunor tried to push ahead. Then he tried backing out. The diesels growled and smoked, but it was no use.
March 31, 2023 / 12:51 PM EDT / CBS/CNN
Seven U.S. government investigators briefly fell ill in early March while studying the possible health impacts of a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The investigators' symptoms included sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea – consistent with what some residents in Ohio and across the border in Pennsylvania experienced after the Feb. 3 train derailment that released a cocktail of hazardous chemicals into the air, water and soil.
The investigators who experienced symptoms were part of a team conducting a house-to-house survey in an area near the derailment, and they immediately reported their symptoms to federal safety officers.
“Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours. Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects,” a CDC spokesperson said in the statement.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/cdc-team-sick-east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment/
Replacing two 50-car trains with a single 100-car train increases the odds of derailment by 11 percent, according to a new risk analysis
BEN GUARINO - JUNE 18, 2024
The U.S. has no federal limit on freight train length, leaving the cost-conscious rail industry free to experiment with giants like the 3.5-mile, nine-locomotive behemoth that chugged from Texas to California in a 2010 test run. But the question of capping length snapped sharply into focus last year with the fiery crash of a 150-car, 1.75-mile train carrying chemical cargo through East Palestine, Ohio.
Can a train be too long? There are almost no data on any possible dangers posed by multiple-mile freight trains. Now, however, a new study published in Risk Analysis shows that the odds of a train jumping the tracks increases as the vehicle gets longer. Replacing two 50-car trains with one 100-car train raises the aggregate odds of derailment by 11 percent, the study concluded—even accounting for an overall decrease in the number of trains running. A 200-car train would have a 24 percent increase compared with four 50-car trains, according to the study team’s calculations.
The increased risk is relative. “Derailments are uncommon events, fortunately,” says study co-author Peter Madsen, a Brigham Young University professor of organizational behavior. During the decade-long study period, he notes, there were about 300 derailments per year on mainline U.S. railway tracks. With the freight industry’s time and cost pressures likely to continue to mount, safety questions could quickly grow more urgent.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/longer-freight-trains-are-more-likely-to-derail/
Rachel Uranga, Irfan Khan, Richard Winton - Jan. 16, 2022 5 AM PT
The scene was a stretch of railroad tracks in Lincoln Heights on Saturday: a blizzard of torn plastic wrappers, cardboard boxes and paper packaging attesting to a wave of rail car thievery that officials say has been on the rise in recent months.
Several scavengers picked through the debris, hoping to find electronics, clothes or whatever valuables thieves left behind.
“Everything comes on the train — cellphones, Louis Vuitton purses, designer clothes, toys, lawnmowers, power equipment, power tools,” said a 37-year-old man who declined to give his name. He said he comes to the tracks regularly and once found a Louis Vuitton purse and a robotic arm worth five figures: “We find things here and there, make some money off of it.”
Thieves are pilfering railroad cars in a crime that harks back to the days of horseback-riding bandits, but is fueled by a host of modern realities, including the rise of e-commerce and Southern California’s role as a hub for the movement of goods.
Adrian Guerrero, general director-Public Affairs - 01 - 16 - 2022
The thefts involve criminals trespassing on Union Pacific property, climbing aboard trains and breaking into customers’ containers loaded with cargo, packages and merchandise destined to warehouse facilities around the country.
Union Pacific has 1,600 employees covering 275 miles of track at its nine rail facilities throughout Los Angeles County. The railroad mobilized an aggressive response, increasing the number of police assigned to protecting the targeted areas in Los Angeles County, as well as leveraging technology, such as drone surveillance, specialized fencing and trespass-detection systems.
Union Pacific agents have made hundreds of arrests, but less than half are booked and some are released in less than 24 hours.
In addition to Union Pacific efforts, partnership with local and state law enforcement and elected public officials is essential. Over the past year, rail thefts have increased by 160% in Los Angeles County and have spiked in the past three months during the holiday peak season. In October 2021 alone, thefts from Union Pacific trains increased 356% compared to October 2020.
https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/inside_track/la-cargo-threats-aggressive-response-220116.htm
Mike Ade - January 19, 2022
News organizations both locally and nationally have been covering the rise of cargo theft in L.A.’s northeast train tracks in the past few days. Anchors on morning news have been quick to point out that there have been over 100 arrests, and even Forbes have been quick to point out the staggering $5 million worth of merchandise lifted. L.A. TACO first reported on this last November.
Union Pacific, the train company, has gone so far as blasting L.A. District Attorney George Gascon for his policy that has enabled this rampant rise in theft.
However, one major development that may be directly correlated with the rise in theft has continuously been left out: In September of 2020, due to pandemic-related budget cuts, Union Pacific laid off an unspecified number of employees across the railroad system. Including members of its railroad-only police force.
Gascon said UP filed fewer criminal cases to the DA's office in 2021 than it did in 2020 or 2019
By Audrey Conklin | Fox News - 22 January 2022
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon on Friday responded to railroad company Union Pacific's (UP) concerns regarding train burglaries in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of LA.
In December 2021, Adrian Guerrero, UP's state director of public affairs in California, sent a letter to the district attorney pointing to rising retail theft crime in LA County over the past year as part of the reason train thefts were occurring more frequently and asking for assistance in addressing it on UP railroads. UP says it experienced a 160% increase in criminal rail theft in Los Angeles County over the past year.
Last week, UP urged Gascon to “reconsider” Special Directive 20-07, which allows many misdemeanor cases to be declined or dismissed prior to arraignment unless “factors for considerations” exist.
Matthew DeLay - April 25, 2022
Editor’s Note: The Surface Transportation Board is conducting an in-person hearing April 26-27 (EP 770, Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service) with the CEOs of the “Big Four” Class I railroads—BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific—on service problems. Class I locomotive engineer Matthew DeLay, without identifying his employer, sent this letter to STB Chairman Marty Oberman on April 19 as commentary for the hearing. It was entered into the Public Record by the STB Office of Proceedings on April 19. It is reproduced here in its entirety, with only minor edits. The opinions expressed here are those of Mr. DeLay, not Railway Age. – William C. Vantuono
Dear Chairman Oberman and Board Members:
Greetings, I hope this finds you all well. A fellow engineer passed along information from another engineer, who I have never met, Mike, 17 years an engineer, like me, with a degree, like me (art, English), which has led to writing this body. The issues before you are customer service shortages and labor shortages. I will address one issue on the topic of service shortages: Precision Scheduled Railroad (PSR) monster trains.
The Surface Transportation Board already knows this; the FRA knows this, the shippers know this; the car owners/lessees know this, the executives know this; and certainly the front line knows all too well: It is impossible to get goods to market in a timely way, when the train has derailed. Monster trains keep derailing to the point where it seems, from almost all the above parties, this has become normalized and acceptable. What other conclusion can one come to: It keeps happening, on a routine basis.
https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/it-is-getting-worse-people-are-leaving/
ONE could be held liable for not delivering solar panels
Joanna Marsh - Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Japanese container shipping company Ocean Network Express is suing Union Pacific over cargo theft that occurred on UP’s intermodal trains.
According to ONE’s legal filing in the U.S. District Court for Nebraska, UP (NYSE: UNP) was contracted to deliver solar panels from China to Salt Lake City via the Port of Los Angeles, but when the panels arrived at Salt Lake City, the container’s door was missing and the panels had been stolen.
ONE estimates the claim for failing to deliver the solar panels is worth just under $15,800. If ONE is held liable for the claim, UP should also be held responsible for failing to deliver the cargo, attorneys for ONE argued.
“ONE is entitled to indemnity against Union Pacific for any and all sums which ONE may be required to pay on the underlying claim, whether by judgment or settlement, including attorneys’ fees and expenses,” ONE said in its June 3 filing.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/union-pacific-ocean-network-express-one-cargo-theft-lawsuit
President Joe Biden announced that a new deal could stave off union strikes that could have wreaked havoc with supply lines.
Kyle Barr - 15 September 2022 10:10AM
Apparently, all it took for unionized freight rail workers to finally force their companies to let them see a doctor without being penalized was to threaten to upend the entire supply chain. In tense, near-day long negotiations, White House and rail company trade groups both announced there is a deal, and all they’re waiting on is ratification from union membership.
Though they were granted pay raises in this latest round of contract negotiations, unionized freight rail workers were particularly hung up on rail company’s policies that penalized them for taking medical appointments. Workers had also called for more standardized working hours after years of being forced to be on-call practically all day, any day of the week. Federal law under the Railway Labor Act only guaranteed 10 hours off every 24 hours.
https://gizmodo.com/rail-workers-union-strike-biden-amtrak-1849539113
The passenger line wants to use the cargo companies' train tracks to restore service to the Gulf Coast, which has been disrupted since Hurricane Katrina.
April 15, 2022, 11:18 AM PDT - Deon J. Hampton
An ongoing feud between two freight rail companies and Amtrak over restoring passenger service on the Gulf Coast spilled into the open again this week on social media, with Amtrak seemingly attempting to shame its cargo counterparts into submission.
Amtrak claims the freight carriers CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway believe the route is too busy with their trains to handle passenger traffic and posted a livestream of the largely idle line, tweeting, “babe wake up, CSX's fourth gulf coast train since 8 am just dropped.”
Amtrak wants to restore two daily roundtrip trains from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans that were closed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amtrak-takes-twitter-beef-freight-carriers-new-level-rcna24585
Jill Robbins - May.14.2022
My earliest memory of a passenger train is from back in the 1970s before permanent press was common. My mother used to hire out our ironing. We crossed a train track to pick up the clothes and we usually got stuck there. I was fascinated by watching the slow-moving freight trains chug by, my mom probably less so.
One day, I saw a different sort of train. The guardrail dropped, and a gleaming, silver train whizzed by so fast it appeared blurry. The guardrail raised and we rolled over the track.
My mother explained it was an Amtrak passenger train. She told me about sleeper compartments and dining cars. Five-year-old me was intrigued. I told myself I would ride a train like that someday.
https://www.travelawaits.com/2756688/amtrak-sleeper-car-things-to-know-before-you-book/
Jill Robbins - Jul 24, 2022, 5:08 AM
It takes me about five hours to drive from my home in San Antonio to Alpine, a small West Texas town near Big Bend National Park.
I wasn't in a major rush on my most recent trip to the popular adventure-travel destination, so I left my car at home and bought a $47 ticket for Amtrak's Texas Eagle, which runs between Chicago and San Antonio.
My coach-class seat on the Texas Eagle was large and comfortable.
There were no middle seats in the section, and each chair reclined and had its own power outlet. For the sake of comparison, riding in Texas Eagle's coach class felt similar to flying in business class.
I do, however, wish I'd brought a blanket and neck pillow.
https://www.insider.com/what-its-like-taking-amtrak-through-texas-san-antonio-alpine-2022-7
In September 2022, after watching many YouTube videos of other people on long-distance Amtrak trips, I finally embarked on a journey of my own. I took the Amtrak Southwest Chief train from Chicago to Los Angeles. Continue reading to learn more about it and why I'll do it again on another route.
Lennart Koopmann - 03 Feb 2023
This is a question I got a lot. When I told friends that I booked a ticket to be on a train for over 40 hours, many didn’t understand why anyone would want to do this when you can fly for cheaper and in so much less time, enjoying comforts like in-flight entertainment, drinks, snacks, and the airport lounges.
The idea behind such a trip was to experience the country differently. I moved to the United States from Germany only 7 years ago and have flown all over it so many times, but never seen much of it up close. I can give you directions to a good bar or restaurant in dozens of cities, but I have never seen Arizona. I can navigate 20 airports blindly but never saw a sunrise in Kansas. Taking a train slows you down and gets you 34,000 feet closer to life on earth.
Website with Amtrak map where you can search for a route or station
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 28, 2025 07:02PM
Amtrak's new 160 mph tilting Acela trains have debuted on the Northeast Corridor, offering smoother rides, upgraded interiors, faster Wi-Fi, and 27% more seating capacity. However, “they don't complete the journey any faster than the old trains,” reports The Independent. From the report:
Acela runs from Washington, DC's Union Station to Boston via Philadelphia, New York Penn Station, New Haven, and Providence. It's a total distance of 457 miles, with the fastest next-gen Acela journey being six hours and 43 minutes, five minutes slower than the quickest end-to-end time offered by the old Acela trains, introduced in 2000. However, this may be because, as is common practice with new trains the world over, Amtrak is scheduling longer dwell times at stations so staff and passengers can adjust to them. The next-gen sets have a top service speed that's 10mph faster – though this can only be achieved on certain sections of the mostly 110mph route – and an enhanced “anticipative” tilting system that allows for higher speeds through curves.
07.08.22
For decades, rail aficionados have asked us: Why does BART use a nonstandard gauge, or track width?
The public has floated many theories. Some say the decision was political. Others say BART sought to keep freight or passenger rail cars off the system. The truth can be found in an unassuming-looking pamphlet from 1964, published nearly a decade before BART began passenger service.
Jay Bolcik, former BART Manager of Schedules and Service Planning, discovered a copy of the pamphlet in a box of BART ephemera tucked high away on a shelf of Prelinger Library in San Francisco. On its cover is an image of two men with a model BART train, with the title: “Assuring the Stability of the BARTD Lightweight Rapid Transit Vehicle.” (You can view a PDF of the entire pamphlet here.)
By the Staff of GJEL Attorneys - Dec 14, 2017
If you’re a frequent BART rider, chances are you’ve been in a situation where you need to exit a station shortly after entering it. Maybe you heard an announcement that BART is experiencing systemwide delays and you need to find another means of transportation. Maybe you just missed a train late at night, and instead of waiting 20 minutes, you decide to catch an Uber. Or maybe you forgot something at your home/work/car/etc. and need to run back out of the station to fetch the item. If this has happened to you, chances are you’ve been hit by BART’s Excursion Fare.
BART charges a $5.75 Excursion Fare anytime a rider enters and exits the same station, regardless of whether the exit occurred within three minutes or three hours. The fare is equal to three short trips (e.g. Berkeley to Oakland, $1.95) or one long Transbay trip (e.g. San Francisco to Concord, $5.80). It is briefly mentioned in BART’s Fare and Schedule guide, which says: “BART’s Excursion Fare allows anyone to tour the BART system (all 46 stations) for up to three hours on a $5.75 fare, as long as you enter and exit at the same station.”
Service was limited for much of the morning.
AJ Dellinger - May 9, 2025
San Francisco’s widely relied upon public transportation system, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), went down early Friday morning due to a “computer networking problem,” according to city officials. The outage brought the entire system to a halt at around 5:00 am local time, forcing commuters to quickly find an alternative travel plan. BART officials announced that service had been restored across the entire system around 9:30 am local time, though a spokesperson for the agency told The San Francisco Standard, “Riders should expect residual major delays as we ramp back up.”
The system’s shutdown, while temporary, caused a considerable number of logistical issues for riders. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the transit system averaged about 175,000 riders on weekdays during the month of March. With BART out of order, riders were forced to shift their commute to buses, ride shares, and other alternatives. Some of those options are cost-prohibitive—San Francisco ranked in the top 10 for most expensive cities for ride sharing. The Chronicle spoke to one person who opted to wait for the trains to start running again rather than take a Lyft that would have cost $70 to get to his destination.
To accommodate the travelers stranded by BART, the San Francisco Municipal Railway offered additional buses and extra trains on some lines. The San Francisco Bay Ferry also used larger boats to make room for more riders, per the Chronicle.
Transit advocates hold signs calling for more public transit funding at the Fremont Street off-ramp for westbound I-80 in San Francisco on May 9, 2025. Tens of thousands of Bay Area transit riders woke up Friday to find no BART service at all. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Jared Servantez & Katie DeBenedetti - May 9, 2025 / Updated 2:05 p.m. May 9, 2025
An hourslong outage of the entire BART system on Friday morning, which forced tens of thousands of riders to find other ways to get around the Bay Area, was not a result of aging equipment, the agency said.
Trains on the Bay Area’s largest transit system did not start running early Friday, suspended until about 9:30 a.m. because of what the agency called a computer networking problem. In an email midday, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said the issue was caused by network devices not having proper connectivity.
“We now know the root cause was not related to the train control system needing to be upgraded. It also didn’t have to do with aged equipment,” she wrote.
It was the largest systemwide BART outage since 2019, when a weekend service meltdown highlighted the need to replace the agency’s decades-old central train control system.
That shutdown, caused by a networking switch failure that made it impossible for BART to dispatch any trains, came as the agency was in the initial stages of a 10-year train control system replacement supported by funds from a 2016 bond measure.
The project, contracted to railway company Hitachi, is ongoing, and implementation is underway, according to Trost. Still, she said the train control system was not a factor in Friday’s outage.
Nov 9, 2025 - Filip Grace
I have a love-hate relationship with BART. I’m grateful for it, but let’s just say it’s not always the most reliable so it’s nice to see before hand when the train you need is due to arrive. There are plenty of projects out there that show real-time BART arrival information. This one does that too, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but I wanted to build my own version that captures the vintage BART platform sign vibe I associate with commuting between the East Bay and my job in the city.
Olivia Harden, Travel Reporter - Nov 14, 2024
Caltrain officials say the recently launched electrification project is paying off, after seeing a significant ridership increase since making the switch. The new trains officially took off from most Caltrain stations Sept. 21.
This October, Caltrain saw more than 753,000 passengers take to its railways, a 54% increase from October 2023, according to a news release Thursday. Comparing August 2024’s “primarily diesel service” to October 2024’s all-electric service, the trains saw an overall 17% increase in ridership. Rather than its typical post-August decline in monthly ridership, the service has seen more than 100,000 additional riders.
“When we broke ground on the Electrification Project back in 2017, we set out to deliver a state-of-the-art modern rail system for the people we serve,” Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said in the news release. “It is immensely gratifying to see our riders embrace our new service on this scale. If you haven’t experienced the future of transportation for yourself yet, find out what everyone has been talking about.”
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/caltrain-electrification-project-paying-off-19917422.php
California's dream of building a high-speed rail system linking San Francisco and LA is a cautionary tale of ambition outpacing funding, planning, and federal support.
Benton Graham, Grist - September 10, 2025
Seventeen years ago, Californians bet on a grand vision of the future. They narrowly approved a $10 billion bond issue to build a high-speed rail line that would zip between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. This technological marvel would slash emissions, revitalize the state’s Central Valley, and, with some financial help from the feds and private sector, provide the fast, efficient, and convenient travel Asia and Europe have long enjoyed.
State officials promised to deliver this transit utopia by 2020. Instead, costs have more than doubled, little track has been laid, and service isn’t expected to begin before 2030—and only between Bakersfield and Merced, two cities far from the line’s ultimate destinations.
It’s little wonder the project finds itself in a precarious financial position, fighting political headwinds, and deemed a boondoggle by everyone from federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. “In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” they wrote, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high speed rail.”
The reasons for this vary with who’s being asked, but people with expertise often cite three fundamental missteps: creating a new agency to lead the effort, failing to secure adequate funding from the start, and choosing a route through California’s agricultural heartland. The state’s strict environmental review process hasn’t helped, either.
https://gizmodo.com/californias-high-speed-rail-fiasco-keeps-getting-worse-2000656798
January 09, 2026
Caltrain recently replaced diesel trains with electric, cutting 25 minutes from the trip time.
Faster speed, increased frequency, and more reliable service are causing ridership growth on Caltrain, the San Francisco Bay Area’s passenger railway. The ridership increase and service upgrades are a direct result of the electrification of Caltrain’s entire fleet of rolling stock in September 2024. “For the first time in the railroad’s 160-year history, diesel service was replaced with electric service along the 50-mile main line between San Francisco and San Jose,” Caltrain reported.
Caltrain’s total ridership in Fiscal Year 2025 (ending June 30, 2025) increased 47% over the previous fiscal year, from 6.2 million to 9.1 million passengers. In June 2025, Caltrain recorded more than 1 million monthly passengers for the first time since the pandemic. It passed the 1 million-passenger mark in July and August as well, which was roughly a 60% increase over ridership totals for those months in 2024, just before the fleet’s electrification.
The results are a powerful argument for electrification and the adoption of a regional rail model of service by every commuter railway in North America — i.e., offering fast, frequent service throughout the day, including weekends, instead of catering to antiquated commuting patterns and weekday rush hours.
https://www.hsrail.org/blog/caltrain-shows-why-every-region-should-be-moving-toward-regional-rail/
How to build cheap transit in smaller towns
Benedict Springbett - Jul 23, 2025
Many cities face the following problem. They have railway lines that go where people live. But these railway lines end at the edge of the city center, and don’t go out the other side.
For cities with this problem, the solution is through running (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-magic-of-through-running/). Terminating a train and turning it around takes a lot of space, space that is usually unavailable in a city center. This means running a railway line through the city often doubles or triples the number of trains it can handle. As a bonus, passengers who are going from one side of the city to the other can do that much more quickly, with no change.
Many cities, such as London, Paris, Munich and Milan, have used through running to turn some of their existing Victorian railway lines into metro-style services, by building tunnels under the city center. A few other cities, like Berlin, built viaducts (bridges that carry roads and railways over obstacles), while others, such as Cologne, have simply added platforms at their main stations to enable suburban trains to run through. But all of these are big cities, with over a million people, where the property value uplift or extra revenues from fares can cover the enormous costs (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-stopped-building-cut-and-cover/) of tunneling. But there is another option, affordable for smaller cities or large towns: the tram-train (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/03/tram-trains/).
Nickie Louise - April 18, 2021
Forget about flying from Los Angles to Shanghai, China. Your next trip across the Pacific might just be underwater. While everyone is talking about the coronavirus pandemic, China is embarking on its most ambitious plan to connect Mailand China to the United States through a $200 billion underwater high-speed train project.
If everything goes as plan, you might be able to travel from China to America in two days without setting foot in a single airport. That’s pretty impressive considering that a flight from Beijing to the US takes about 14 hours. The underwater railway network will connect Mainland China from Beijing to San Francisco.
China Railway first unveiled the 8,000-mile high-speed underwater railway project in 2014. The underwater train will connect China, Russia, Canada, and the U.S. including a 125-mile undersea tunnel spanning the Bering Strait then to Alaska.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday July 07, 2022 05:02PM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Travel:
Breakfast in Paris, lunch in Frankfurt and dinner in Vienna – all without the hassle and frustration of flying. Imagine a network of modern, super-fast and comfortable trains hurtling between every major city in the European Union, providing a reliable, comfortable and sustainable alternative to air travel. That was the vision outlined by rail industry leaders in Lyon, France, on June 29, amid ambitious European plans to double high-speed rail use by 2030 and triple current levels by 2050. Only a massive – and accelerated – expansion of the high-speed network can achieve these hugely ambitious targets, but are they a realistic and affordable proposition?
July 12, 2022
Why don’t rails get hot in Europe? The truth is they do.
However, in countries typically hotter than ours, rails are stressed to withstand higher temperatures.
Hot weather can cause a great deal of disruption to the railway so Britain’s rails are pre-stressed to help them resist high temperatures. Our rails have a stress-free temperature of 27 degrees – the UK mean summer rail temperature. Other countries choose different temperatures depending on their climate.
When the air temperature reaches 30 degrees, the temperature on the rail can actually be up to 20 degrees higher. More than three-quarters of track on the network today is modern on concrete sleepers.
For some of our track, such high temperatures are more than our track is designed to cope with, however. The problem is that when steel rails get hot, they expand, which can cause a buckled rail.
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/why-rails-buckle-in-britain/
In 1984, British Railways and the Central Electricity Generating Board deliberately destroyed a train to prove the safety of nuclear fuel flasks. Here’s how the crash was reported on in the October 1984 issue of The Railway Magazine.
17th January 2024 - Alex Bestwick
At lunchtime on Tuesday July 17, class “46” locomotive No. 46 009 and three Mkl coaches. Nos. E25154. M4514 and E25564. crashed at 100 m.p.h. into a derailed “Flatrol” wagon, loaded with a steel flask of of the type used for carrying irradiated fuel rods from nuclear power stations to the works of British Nuclear Fuels Limited in Cumbria. for reprocessing.
However, this was no accident. but part of a four—year £4m programme of tests on full—size nuclear fuel flasks undertaken by the Central Electricity Generating Board to allay any public disquiet on the ability of these vessels to stand up to the severest forms of accident. The flask in the test. which was loaded with three tonnes of steel bars to simulate nuclear fuel rods, and filled with water at 100 lb. per sq. in. (though about 15 lb. per sq. in. is the normal service pressure). survived the impact virtually unscathed, apart from a gouge on the lid, and only lost 0.2 lb. per sq. in. pressure as a result of the impact.
British Railways has been carrying these flasks safely round the country for some twenty years now, in which time there have been no serious incidents involving them, but persistent fears have been voiced by an anti-nuclear lobby, as a result of which the CEGB embarked on a series of tests with half and quarter-full—size models. However. its critics were not satisfied, saying that models were all very well, but what about the real thing? Would it behave in the same way as the models? This caused the CEGB to undertake full—size tests, which it had up to then resisted, because of the cost.
https://www.therailwayhub.co.uk/67072/from-the-archive-operation-smash-hit-84/
Michal J A Paszkiewicz - 14 March 2023
A city map of bus and train stations
A few people recently asked me if there was a nice way of displaying the distribution of bus stops across London. Having some statistical data is nice, but seeing an image is even nicer.
I took a data sample from Overpass-Turbo of bus stops and train (or Undeground) stations.
https://www.cricetuscricetus.co.uk/post/a-city-map-of-bus-and-train-stations
Deutsche Bahn’s once-admired service has descended into chaos. Whether decades of poor investment or the company’s unusual structure is to blame, it’s a huge headache for a coalition trying to meet climate goals
Joanna Partridge, Cologne - Sat 14 Oct 2023 08.00 EDT
The sleek high-speed train is 10 minutes behind schedule when it slides into Cologne’s main station before continuing its journey north to Dortmund. The delay is now such a common occurrence that the train manager does not even bother to mention it to disembarking passengers.
In late afternoon on an unremarkable weekday in this western German city, holidaymakers are hauling suitcases through the station, workers are commuting home, and the late arrival of Deutsche Bahn’s IC 118 from Innsbruck is no surprise.
It does cause annoyance, though: a glance at the departures and arrivals board prompts one middle-aged man carrying a backpack to swear loudly as he enters the station.
It’s hard to blame him: on the afternoon the Observer visited, the arrivals board showed that eight out of the next nine trains due into Cologne were behind schedule. The degree of lateness ranged from minutes to several hours, and a lengthy queue had formed at the entrance hall’s information desk.
The hackers claim Polish trains were deliberately bricked by the manufacturer and they were just providing a service. “It’s DRM gone wild.”
Maxwell Zeff - 13 December 2023
Three hackers in Poland were hired to fix the software of a broken train, and they were successful, but now the train company, Newag, is threatening to sue them, according to Polish outlet Rynek Kolejowy. The hackers allege that the trains were deliberately outfitted with software that would ensure they couldn’t operate if they were repaired by an independent company.
“Today we are sure that it was a deliberate action on Newag’s part,” said Michał Kowalczyk, part of the Polish hacking group Dragon Sector, last week. “We discovered the manufacturer’s interference in the software, which led to forced failures and to the fact that the trains did not start.”
“Bricking” is common for tech companies—Australia sued Apple in 2017 for bricking iPhones repaired by third parties—but it’s much rarer to hear about bricking a train. The train manufacturer in question, Newag, is one of the oldest railway companies in Poland, and they are not taking this fiasco lightly. “This is slander from our competition, which is conducting an illegal black PR campaign against us,” said Newag in a statement to the Polish publication.
https://gizmodo.com/hackers-hit-with-legal-threats-after-they-fixed-a-brick-1851097424
Posted by msmash on Wednesday December 13, 2023 11:20AM
Hackers unbricked a train in Poland that had been deliberately disabled by its manufacturer. Now the manufacturer is threatening legal action against the hackers despite evidence it sabotaged the trains. From a report:
The manufacturer is also now demanding that the repaired trains immediately be removed from service because they have been “hacked,” and thus might now be unsafe, a claim they also cannot substantiate.
The situation is a heavy machinery example of something that happens across most categories of electronics, from phones, laptops, health devices, and wearables to tractors and, apparently, trains. In this case, NEWAG, the manufacturer of the Impuls family of trains, put code in the train's control systems that prevented them from running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent a certain number of days in an independent repair company's maintenance center, and also prevented it from running if certain components had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number.
Jason Koebler - Dec 13, 2023 at 9:09 AM
They did DRM to a train.
In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.
The fallout from the situation is currently roiling Polish infrastructure circles and the repair world, with the manufacturer of those trains denying bricking the trains despite ample evidence to the contrary. The manufacturer is also now demanding that the repaired trains immediately be removed from service because they have been “hacked,” and thus might now be unsafe, a claim they also cannot substantiate.
An anti-right-to-repair scheme caught the attention of Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau after hackers went public.
Maxwell Zeff - 19 December 2023
A Polish hacking group, Dragon Sector, went public recently with a scandal about one of Poland’s oldest train makers, Newag, bricking its own trains when they were repaired by third parties. However, new reporting on Tuesday from Polish publication Onet alleges that Dragon Sector first went to government officials with the story a year ago, and it was even brought to the attention of the Polish Prime Minister at the time, Mateusz Morawiecki.
Dragon Sector went public with the train-bricking fiasco at a Warsaw conference this month out of frustration, according to Onet. The hackers had attempted to address this problem through government channels for over a year. Onet’s sources say that Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau is now investigating the scandal.
https://gizmodo.com/polish-train-shutdown-hackers-prime-minister-repair-1851111884
Renfe provided incorrect information to the manufacturer of new regional trains for the Spanish regions of Cantabria and Asturias. The costly error has resulted in dismissals at the highest level of the nationalized company.
Sandrine Morel (Madrid (Spain) correspondent) - February 10, 2023 at 17h45
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The intentions of Spanish public railway operator, Renfe, were good: to renovate the 40-year-old railway fleet, increasingly subject to damage, in the regions of Cantabria and Asturias in the country's north. But the miscalculation that crept into the order details could cost Renfe dearly. The specified dimensions of the trains were too large.
So much larger in fact that if Basque railway manufacturer CAF had simply followed the instructions provided by Renfe in 2020, when it won the tender, the 31 trains it would have delivered would not have been able to fit through the tunnels. While the manufacturer came to the realization relatively early during the design stage, the delivery will still be delayed by two to three years and the project, initially estimated at €258 million, will suffer a massive yet-to-be-determined cost blowout.
“I hope that heads will roll!” said the president of the Cantabria regional government, Miguel Angel Revilla, on Thursday, February 2, without hiding his anger against what he called “monumental pig work.” Spanish Minister of Transport Raquel Sanchez apologized and took the matter seriously, announcing on Saturday, February 4, the dismissals of the former head of material management at Renfe, who was in charge when the new trains were awarded, and the head of inspection and track technology at the rail network manager, ADIF. For now.
Francesca Street, CNN - 15th September 2022
(CNN) — Welcome to the future of European high-speed rail travel.
French railway company SNCF and train manufacturer Alstom have unveiled the first completed TGV M, a next-generation high-speed double-decker train that features a longer, more aerodynamic nose – perfect for hurtling across the French countryside.
Alstom dubbed the new train “the TGV of the future.” TGV stands for Train à Grand Vitesse, meaning high-speed train. This swanky new design will premiere on the Paris rail network in 2024 and across the country over the following 10 years.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/tgv-m-next-generation-high-speed-train-france/index.html
Why can't we have one?
By Caroline Delbert - Jul 22, 2020
Despite the postponed Olympics, Japan is still introducing a new high-speed train that the country intended to roll out for the 2020 Tokyo games. The new train can go 224 miles per hour, but will be capped at “just” 177 for operation. The makers also say the train is earthquake-proof because of its onboard power source and different modes for tackling dangerous track.
With better brakes and running controls, the train can also slow and stop much faster in an emergency. People (safely) flocked to the train’s inaugural run on July 1, which marked the first new train model on the Tokaido Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed rail system, in more than a decade.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33372664/japan-new-bullet-train-shinkansen-earthquakes/
Rebecca Crowe - 25 December 2024
Yoshioka-Kaitei Station platform in the Seikan Tunnel
Around the world, there are some truly iconic tunnels. From the engineering marvel of the popular Channel Tunnel linking the UK and France to the world's longest and deepest tunnel, the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland, we love traveling through subterranean worlds!
However, some of the world's biggest tunnels are less popular than others despite the hefty investment that goes into these feats of engineering. The longest underwater tunnel in the world is now barely used.
So, while conversing about a transatlantic underwater tunnel linking the US and the UK, let's look at the world's biggest - and most underutilized - case study! While it might seem easy to beat traffic and hide unsightly roads away from public view, is it worth the billions of dollars spent?
https://www.thetravel.com/largest-underwater-tunnel-in-the-world-unused/
John Ryan - June 18, 2024 7:13 am
A federal judge on Monday ordered BNSF Railway to pay the Swinomish Tribe $395 million for illegally running mile-long oil trains through the tribe’s reservation for nearly a decade.
Since 2012, BNSF has been hauling Bakken crude from North Dakota to a pair of oil refineries in Anacortes, Washington. To get there, the mile-long trains roll through the Swinomish Reservation, about 50 miles north of Seattle.
BNSF has permission from the tribe to run two oil trains a day, totaling no more than 50 tanker cars, through its reservation.
Instead, BNSF has been running oil trains with 100 or more cars each across the reservation’s northern end up to six times a day.
“The trespass was willful, knowing, and conscious throughout the trespass period,” U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik said in his ruling.
As a “conscious wrongdoer,” BNSF “will be stripped of the net profits obtained from its unauthorized interference with another’s property,” Lasnik ordered.
Caltrain’s electric trains started rolling out last week. The advantages go far beyond just cutting CO2 emissions.
08-19-2024 - Adele Peters
If you ride on the newest commuter trains from San Francisco to San Jose, the first thing that you might notice is how quiet they are: Instead of the rumble of a diesel engine, the trains now run on 100% electricity.
By switching to electric trains, Caltrain, the rail service, can eliminate 250,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions a year, roughly as much as the pollution from 55,000 cars. But it’s also just a better experience for riders. That might convince more commuters to stop driving to work, cutting emissions even further.
Electric trains are faster
First, the electric trains run faster than the diesel trains that they’re replacing. Instead of a single locomotive in the front pulling the entire train behind it, each individual car is now an “electrical multiple unit,” or EMU, with its own engine, connected to overhead electric wires. “It’s generating power throughout the system,” says Dan Lieberman, a public information officer for Caltrain. “It just allows it to get up to speed much faster.”
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday January 28, 2025 05:30PM
sciencehabit shares a report from Science:
Legend has it that if you walk along Old Light Road in Summerville, South Carolina, you might see an eerie glow hovering over an abandoned rail line in the nearby woods. Old-timers will tell you it's a spectral lantern held by the apparition of a woman searching for her decapitated husband's head. Susan Hough has proposed a scientific explanation that is far more plausible, however. A seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, she believes the so-called Summerville Light could represent a rare natural phenomenon: earthquake lights.
Sparks from steel rail tracks could ignite radon or other gases released from the ground by seismic shaking, Hough explains in an interview with Science. In Summerville, I think it's the railroad tracks that matter. I've crawled around tracks during my fieldwork in South Carolina. Historically, when [rail companies] replaced tracks, they didn't always haul the old track away. So, you've got heaps of steel out there. Sparks might be part of the story. And maybe the railroads are important for another reason. They may naturally follow fault lines that have carved corridors through the landscape.
The findings have been published in the journal Seismological Research Letters. Hough also cites a paper published by Japanese scientist Yuji Enomoto that connects earthquake lights to the release of gases like radon or methane.
Posted by msmash on Thursday February 27, 2025 09:21AM
New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Google have successfully tested technology that uses smartphone sensors to detect subway track defects, the MTA said Thursday. The four-month experiment, dubbed TrackInspect, mounted six Google Pixel phones on four A train subway cars traversing Manhattan and Queens. The phones' accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes and external microphones collected 335 million sensor readings and 1,200 hours of audio data, which were processed through 200 prediction models.
The system identified 92% of defects later confirmed by human inspectors, including broken rails and loose bolts. “The goal with this [project] is to find issues before they become a major issue in terms of service,” said Demetrius Crichlow, the agency's president. Following the successful trial, the MTA plans to expand to a full pilot where Google will build a production version for track inspectors.
Posted by msmash on Monday May 05, 2025 08:21AM
New York City's subway system continues to operate largely on analog signal technology installed nearly a century ago, with 85% of the network still relying on mechanical equipment that requires constant human intervention. The outdated system causes approximately 4,000 train delays monthly and represents a technological time capsule in America's largest mass transit system.
Deep inside Brooklyn's Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, transit worker Dyanesha Pryor operates a hulking machine the size of a grand piano by manipulating 24 metal levers that control nearby trains. Each command requires a precise sequence of movements, punctuated by metallic clanking as levers slam into place. When Pryor needs to step away, even for a bathroom break, express service must be rerouted until she returns, forcing all trains onto local tracks.
The antiquated “fixed block” signaling divides tracks into approximately 1,000-foot sections. When a train occupies a block, it cuts off electrical current, providing only a general position rather than precise location data. This imprecision requires maintaining buffer zones between trains, significantly limiting capacity as ridership has grown. Maintenance challenges are also piling up, writes the New York Times. Hundreds of cloth-wrapped wires – rather than modern rubber insulation – fill back rooms and are prone to failure. When equipment breaks, replacements often must be custom-made in MTA workshops, as many components have been discontinued for decades.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/05/0712248/a-look-at-the-nyc-subways-archaic-signal-system
By Ralph Vartabedian - Aug. 10, 2020 5 AM / UPDATED 9:29 AM
A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on a massive bridge, triggering an order to stop work that further delayed a project already years behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
The bridge is longer than two football fields and is needed to shuttle vehicles over the future bullet train right of way and existing BNSF freight tracks in Madera County.
Authorities have yet to finalize a plan to repair the bridge. Late last year, crews installed temporary steel supports to prevent it from collapsing.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-10/california-bullet-train-bridge-snafu
Brian Potter - Oct 19, 2023
Last week, we looked at the early history of high-speed rail in the US. Though the US attempted to build its own high-speed rail routes soon after they debuted in Japan in 1964, these efforts were unsuccessful, outside of the popular-but-troubled Metroliner. By the end of the 1980s, high-speed passenger rail had been built or was under construction in countries around the world, with trains achieving speeds of up to 190 mph. In the US, by contrast, the Metroliner was achieving a maximum speed of just 120 mph, and other trains were limited to speeds of 80 mph.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-long-sad-history-of-american-971
KEN RITTER - Updated 7:54 PM PDT, April 22, 2024
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A $12 billion passenger bullet train linking Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area was dubbed the first true high-speed rail line in the nation on Monday, with the private company building it predicting millions of ticket-buyers will be boarding trains by 2028.
“People have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America for decades,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg before taking a stage with union representatives and company officials at the future site of a terminal to be built just south of the Las Vegas Strip. “It’s really happening this time.”
Buttigieg cited Biden administration support for the project that he said will bring thousands of union jobs, boost local economies and cut traffic and air pollution.
Brightline West, whose sister company already operates a fast train between Miami and Orlando in Florida, aims to lay 218 miles (351 kilometers) of new track almost all in the median of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California. It would link there with a commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles. A station also is planned in San Bernardino County’s Victorville area.
The rail could connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas by the end of the decade.
Mack DeGeurin - Apr 23, 2024 5:05 PM EDT
Builders have officially broken ground on a new $12 billion train that could zoom travelers between Las Vegas and Los Angeles in just under two hours by the end of the decade. The new train, which is considered the first “high-speed” rail in the United States, could cut down commute time for travelers and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be emitted from cars and planes. Brightline, the firm responsible for the project, received $3 billion in support from the federal government as part of the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure law.
Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was one of several Biden Administration officials on site for a groundbreaking ceremony Monday, described the moment as a “major milestone in building the future of American rail.” The ceremony symbolically took place on Earth Day.
“Partnering with state leaders and Brightline West, we’re writing a new chapter in our country’s transportation story that includes thousands of union jobs, new connections to better economic opportunity, less congestion on the roads, and less pollution in the air,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday April 24, 2024 12:00AM
Construction has begun on a $12 billion high-speed rail project to connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles by the end of the decade. The project, backed by $3 billion in federal support, aims to reduce travel time to under two hours and significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions. Popular Science reports:
Brightline expects its trains will depart every 40 minutes from a station outside of the Vegas strip and another one in the LA suburb of Rancho Cucamonga. When it's completed, the train will travel at 186 miles per hour, making it the fastest train in the U.S. and comparable to Japan's famous bullet trains. For context, Brightline's most recently completed train connecting parts of Florida is estimated to top out around 130 miles per hour. Both of those still fall far short of the speed achieved by the world fastest commuter train in Shanghai, which can reportedly reach a speed of 286 miles per hour. Still, the new train could complete the 218 mile trip between Sin City and a suburb of the City of Angels in just 2 hours and 10 minutes. That same trip would take about four hours by car, and that's without substantial traffic.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/24/0238217/us-breaks-ground-on-its-first-ever-high-speed-rail
Olivia Harden, Travel Reporter - Jan 28, 2025
High-speed rail proponents who look forward to the bullet train connecting Southern California to Las Vegas may get sticker shock from the initial ticket prices.
In recent filings that seek to raise $2.5 billion in a bond offering, Brightline West revealed that ticket prices for the trip would range from about $119 to $133 one way. In comparison, Brightline’s prices for its original line from Miami to Orlando start as low as $29 for a ticket, though that can increase depending on the time, date and class of the ticket.
Brightline West may sway travelers with certain perks to take rail instead of driving to Las Vegas. Notably, riders from Los Angeles skip the interstate congestion that’s typical for the 270-mile trip on Interstate 15, which can take four to five hours with no traffic but often stretches well past six hours during busy days.
In comparison, Brightline West is projected to travel up to 200 mph. The train is expected to reach Las Vegas in just over two hours, even with multiple stops. Travelers from LA will still have to make their way to the Rancho Cucamonga station, which costs $8 and takes an hour and 20 minutes from Union Station on the Metrolink train. A source close to the company said ticket prices reflect the speed at which the train travels. The peak speed of the train in Florida is 130 mph, according to the Brightline website.
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/ticket-prices-leaked-high-speed-rail-california-20059294.php
California approves final high-speed rail link connecting S.F. to Los Angeles
Ricardo Cano, Reporter - June 27, 2024
California’s bullet train project reached a major milestone: The entire 463-mile route from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now environmentally cleared for construction.
The High-Speed Rail Authority’s board signed off Thursday on a preferred route and environmental clearance for the 38-mile segment that would carry bullet trains from Palmdale to Burbank. It was the project’s last segment between San Francisco and Los Angeles that had yet to be cleared.
The high-speed rail segments linking the Central Valley to Silicon Valley and San Francisco gained environmental clearance in 2022, and construction has been underway in the Central Valley, the project’s initial operating segment, for almost a decade.
“Today’s approval is more than a historic milestone — it closes the gap between Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Tom Richards, chair of the rail authority’s board, said in a statement.
Authority officials say they expect to gain approval of a 33-mile segment from Los Angeles to Anaheim by next year. That approval would clear environmental hurdles for the project’s entire “Phase 1” route that was sold to the state’s voters in 2008.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-high-speed-rail-19542125.php