Search results

https://www.trains.com/pro/mechanical/passenger-cars/amtrak-ends-plans-for-new-bi-level-cars/ Amtrak pulls the plug on plans for bi-level Superliner coach replacements. Will instead expand the East Coast long-distance single-level procurement nationwide for fleet commonality. The RFP...

Aloisi is very good; him vs. Chieppo is such a not-fair fight the refs should've intervened to stop it after the first round. But damn does Comm Beacon rely on him an awful lot for op-eds and podcast bookings; he's become like a load-bearing wall for them. Their sourcing for transpo coverage...

https://www.universalhub.com/2026/some-councilors-say-proposed-center-bus-lanes-blue-hill-avenue-are Bus lanes and having buses run frequently and on-time in bus lanes is totes racist, says car-brained Council dunderheads. (Yes, Ed Flynn is prominently involved.) 🤦‍♂️

Per the Board presentation today and the newly-issued RFP the T is partnering with MARC on the battery procurement: 10 batt locos and 10 diesels on the base order for the T, 5 batt locos and 0 diesels on the base order for Maryland. MARC is using the base order to retire their 6 problem-plagued...

Nothing direct-comparable. Stadler hasn't even built a BEMU KISS set yet that's running anywhere in the world; Caltrain is self-flagellating for the task of being that first-time guinea pig. It kind of has to be an apples-apples EMU vs. BEMU configuration, because of the wide variances in...

BTW...here's some required (if technical) reading on loco vs. EMU performance, based on specs for the Caltrain corridor. http://tillier.net/stuff/caltrain/diesel_vs_elecloco_vs_emu.pdf EMU's do about 17% faster times (138 seconds) to reach 79 MPH from a dead stop than a diesel (166 seconds)...

Can't. They're narrower and shorter than Red Line cars and wouldn't be anywhere close to safe to berth at a platform with the step-down and the pronounced gap. The T did use several sets of retired Orange 01100 cars on Red from 1981-87 as work cars, but those were strictly on the overnight...

https://commonwealthbeacon.org/the-codcast/administrative-fat-or-amnesia-how-much-should-we-spend-on-the-mbta/ Pioneer Institute takes yet another whack at (campaigning for their alum Brian Shortsleeve) bringing back the FCMB in their second podcast appearance in 4 weeks. This time Charlie...

NETransit updated... All Orange Line cars have been accepted into service, and the 2 recent derailment-damaged cars have been repaired and put back into service. 150 active cars, 2 out-of-service (the derailment-damaged pair from several years ago). Actual in-service availability lagging...

They charge on overhead cat and drive traction off the battery. In theory it can throttle the consumption of overhead electricity on a mostly-electrified line by weighting more heavily to the battery at times, which can blunt the effects of being gouged by Amtrak for electricity rates like...

It's nothing nefarious. They just can (and do) cite the 2010 Boston water emergency ad infinitum as reason for staying independent from the MWRA district. Cambridge was pretty much the only community inside of 128 that had drinkable water during the 4 days of the boil emergency that affected...

Greasing the skids for a privatization gambit. Although the amount of legal machinery required to restructure Amtrak to that degree probably means it'll take an act of Congress and some degree of fight in the Courts to actually take effect, so I give it low odds of going anywhere even if the...

Don't forget the required switchback ramps for changing elevations at any sort of sustained foot-traffic level for dwell swells. That's going to add several hundred more feet to the walk. At least the Fawcett-to-Cambridgepark vaporware footbridge is more likely to be a straight-line elevation...

City's still fucking-the-chicken on trying to get the private devs to pay for the footbridge. They've been dangling that for years, but the market's long since spoken...no interested takers, so it's at square-one same as it ever was. Showing the possible cross-track connections as formless...

The Federal Highway Administration strongly discourages (see under "Vertical Alignment" section) any grade changes at the crossing, and insists that they be as level as possible with no deviations of more than 3 inches within 30 feet of the crossing, which has been adopted by AASHTO as a...

They pretty much have fucked off from public relevance, and only exist right now as a de facto campaign arm of their recent ex-Board member Brian Shortsleeve for his doomed Gov. campaign. It's why they're hammering the FCMB bullshit right now in complete sync with Shortsleeve's talking points...

Amtrak definitely uses the fees as a big stick for turf warrage. Their fees NY-DC are particularly opaque because all of the NEC's power is single-sourced from Safe Harbor Dam in Pennsylvania, where 2 of the dam's 3 hydroelectric units are exclusively devoted to supplying the Amtrak 25 Hz...

Brookline actually installed all the street-side signal hardware needed for TSP on Beacon St. many years ago. It's the T that's been flagrantly dragging its feet on the final implementation. But, yeah, "controversies" about new-growth weed-like oak-tree'lets is very on-brand for the NIMBY's...

All of that requires town+MBTA coordination, and the towns spending some share of money for road construction. Much like the "Why don't I have a quiet crossing?!?!" controversies that are always percolating through local media, they'd much rather impotently scream at the MBTA for the pure...

There'd be no way to do the MA 140 one without blowing-up/rebuilding the 24/140 interchange all over again. The rail line doesn't have enough room to change elevation between Cotley Jct. on one side and 24 on the other, the brand-new interchange ramps would have to change elevation and partial...