Archinect - News

Brightline West breaks ground on $12 billion Vegas to California high-speed rail project

2024-04-23T17:28:00-04:00

The $12 billion high-speed rail infrastructure project that will connect Las Vegas with various hubs in the Southern California region is off and running. Brightline West’s 218-mile loop is now under construction with a $3 billion push from the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the 2028 finish line in sight to coincide with LA's turn as host of that year's Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Las Vegas Station aerial view. Image courtesy Brightline West

Las Vegas Station interior view. Image courtesy Brightline West

The trains will be operated at a maximal speed of 200 miles per hour, setting the North American record. (Another project between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, will commence soon.) Wes Edens, Brightline's founder, said: “Today is long overdue, but the blueprint we’ve created with Brightline will allow us to repeat this model in other city pairs around the country.”

Rancho Cucamonga Station exterior view. Image courtesy Brightline West...

California high-speed rail project secures critical $4.2B for Central Valley line

2022-07-06T13:41:00-04:00

After wrangling over the future of California’s high-speed rail, state lawmakers plan to release a critical batch of money to finish a bullet train in the Central Valley while also establishing an inspector general to audit the beleaguered project and authorizing billions of dollars in new money for rail plans across the state.

Following a sizable $97.5 billion state budget surplus, California lawmakers last week agreed to allocate $4.2 billion in bond funds needed to finish the ambitious high-speed rail project's 171-mile Central Valley portion which is expected to connect Bakersfield with Merced by 2030, according to current estimates.

Grimshaw reveals final designs for City Rail Link, New Zealand's largest ever infrastructure project

2022-06-10T16:29:00-04:00

Grimshaw has released the final designs for City Rail Link (CRL), the largest infrastructure project ever in New Zealand. Situated in Auckland, it includes three train stations, designed in collaboration with WSP as part of the Link Alliance, a consortium of seven companies delivering the main station and tunnels for the project. Upon completion, CRL will double the capacity of the city’s rail network and will serve as a powerful expression of Māori cultural heritage and history of Tāmaki Makaurau.

Te Wai Horotiu Station. Image render courtesy of Grimshaw.

CRL is New Zealand’s first completely underground railway line. It comprises a 2.14-mile twin-tunnel underground rail link up to 138 feet below Auckland’s city center. The project also includes the transformation of the Britomart Transport Center into a two-way through-station, the construction of two new underground stations, and a new interchange station.

Karanga a hape Station. Image render courtesy of Grimshaw.

The station desig...

California's high-speed rail project could be going in a new direction

2022-03-15T12:12:00-04:00

14 years after voters approved a nearly $10 billion bond to start building the rail system that would whisk riders from Los Angeles to San Francisco at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour, many California residents have long since lost track of what is being built where, and when or if it will ever be completed. “We’re teetering on the edge,” said Ashley Swearengin, a former mayor of Fresno who now leads the Central Valley Community Foundation. “We could get it right.”

The budget for the California high-speed rail project has now swelled to more than double its originally proposed cost of $40 billion from fourteen years ago. Construction on a 31-mile segment of the project has already begun near Fresno in the Central Valley.

The fight now is over whether or not to complete the segment, which would run through only three counties; or, as the state’s Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon is calling for, to focus on the “bookends” (San Fransico and Los Angeles) in a cost-saving venture that would maintain at least some portion of the rail’s original intent and purpose to unite the two most populous nodes.

“The project is by all objective measures in distress,” Rendon told the Times. “Connecting the two largest urban areas in the state is the best thing we can do from an environmental standpoint and an economic development standpoint. To link two cities in the Central Valley would doom the project.”

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Nowhere fast: California's High-Speed Rail project is now twice the size of its originally proposed budget

2022-02-16T20:50:00-05:00

The cost to build California’s ambitious but long delayed high-speed rail line has once again risen, with rail officials now estimating it could take up to $105 billion to finish the line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The project’s price tag has steadily risen since voters first approved nearly $10 billion in bond money for it in 2008, when the total cost was pegged at $40 billion.

The additional need for money stems from necessary sound barrier upgrades and repositioning of the train away from the Central Valley’s Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, according to project officials. The state is confident it can raise the necessary funds from the new federal infrastructure bill, which includes about $55 billion in allocations for transit grants over the next four years.

The 500-mile-long project is still severely lagging in the area of public funding but has nevertheless managed to acquire about 90% of the land parcels needed to complete the project, according to an updated 2022 budget plan released by the California High Speed Rail Authority. A portion of the project is also being funded by the state’s cap-and-trade program, which has been itself been under-resourced as a partial result of the reduction in travel caused by the coronavirus.

All aboard this Wes Anderson-designed train carriage in the English countryside

2021-10-13T11:28:00-04:00

Ahead of his hotly-anticipated feature release, The French Dispatch, director and design savant Wes Anderson is lending his hand to the transportation sector thanks to a unique collaboration between Anderson and Belmond British Pullman.

Anderson, whose 2007 epic The Darjeeling Limited was famously based on a family of eccentric train-savvy travelers in India, worked with the luxury train service to restore an old first-class carriage called Cygnus that had served in Winston Churchill’s funeral procession and been in use since 1951.

Courtesy of Belmond

The converted car comes well-appointed with Anderson's signature straight-line symmetry, a pink-and-green dining room motif, brilliant marquetry, two private coupes, and references to the Greek god of balance from which the car takes its name.

Courtesy of Belmond

Anderson said he was “eager to make something new while also participating in the process of preservation” offered by the train service. Riders can take part in the director’s p...

Iberdrola teams up with AECOM to create Italian railway powered by green hydrogen

2021-08-31T16:59:00-04:00

Spanish utility company Iberdrola has announced that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed, with signatories including AECOM, for a project to convert Italy’s historic Apennine railway into one powered by green hydrogen.

Other members of the agreement include Italian sustainable developer Ancitel Energia e Ambiente and Italian hydrogen company Cinque International. Funded by the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, the project aims to replace defunct diesel locomotives with green hydrogen-powered ones. This switch will be a “drastically less expensive alternative” to traditional electrification, says Iberdrola. The company also claims that this will bring “innovation and development” to areas impacted by depopulation and deindustrialization due to earthquakes in 2009, 2016, and 2017.

The more than 186-mile-long railway line will connect inland areas of Italy, running through four central Italian regions. The MOU also includes an evaluation of the technical viability to ...

The world's first renewable energy-powered, glass-bottomed sky train unveiled in Chengdu

2021-07-12T18:20:00-04:00

Touted as the world’s first renewable energy-powered, suspended sky train, a new transportation system has been unveiled in Chengdu, the capital city of China’s southwest Sichuan Province.

Photo: CCTV

The project, titled the Dayi Air Rail Project, is a first-of-its-kind demonstration line, approximately seven miles in length and featuring an aerial-suspended train that uses lithium battery packs as traction power. The project was primarily developed by Zhongtang Air Rail Technology Co Ltd.

Photo: CCTV

The train offers 270-degree views through generous floor-to-ceiling glass paneling on three sides, along with a glass bottom. The train is made of lightweight carbon fiber and composite foaming materials, which greatly reduces its weight. In a nod to its hometown, the cars are painted to resemble a panda, paying homage to Chengdu, the home of China’s panda breeding program. Each train car has a maximum capacity of 120 people per car and can travel up to 50 miles per hour.

Photo: ...

100 MPH commuter rail plan could modernize San Diego's highways

2019-10-22T12:47:00-04:00

The San Diego Association of Governments’ ambitious rail plan includes laying hundreds of miles of track throughout the county to connect residential areas to these job centers. Agency experts are analyzing the region’s commuter patterns in an attempt to design rail service that lures commuters off the most congested highway corridors. The lines, many of which are planned as subways, will go through existing residential areas with the added aim of encouraging dense development along the routes.

The ambitious plan could be funded by a series of sales tax increases, which would have to be approved by local voters.

SANDAG Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata told The San Diego Union-Tribune, “I think this region is more suited to follow-up with transit-oriented development than any other region in the country,” adding, “All California and the U.S. is designed around the car, around the interstate system. It took 50 years to have the land-use we have. It’s going to take 50 years to reverse it with the rail.”

LAX breaks ground on its new $4.9bn Automated People Mover

2019-03-14T13:42:00-04:00

A groundbreaking ceremony will be held Thursday for the 2.25-mile Automated People Mover at Los Angeles International Airport, which aims to cut down on auto traffic traveling in and out of the airport, officials announced Monday. The project has a targeted opening date of 2023.

Rendering of the people mover train above the terminal loop.

Earlier this morning, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and other city officials celebrated the kick-off of what will be one of the most significant upgrades to Los Angeles International Airport—an elevated Automated People Mover system that will carry passengers among terminals and finally create an ample connection to the regional light rail system and the brand new consolidated rent-a-car facility.

The nearly $5 billion project is expected to bring much-needed congestion relief now that LAX has taken the title of fourth busiest airport in the world (serving a whopping 87.5 million passengers in 2018) and is projected to welcome even more guests when Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

LAX announces consortium to build its new $4.9bn monorail system

2018-06-13T14:03:00-04:00

Bombardier Rail Technologies, ACS Infrastructure Development, Balfour Beatty, Fluor Enterprises and HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions North America have all been chosen to deliver a $4.9bn project to design, build and install an automated people mover system at Los Angeles International Airport. [...] The system will run on a 3.6km elevated dual-lane guideway and will serve six newly-built stations, creating connections between the airport, public and private transportation, and a new car rental facility.

Leaving Pyongyang: Photographer catches rare glimpse of life and architecture in North Korea's hinterland

2018-03-29T15:08:00-04:00

Leaving Pyongyang’s grand architecture, showcase avenues and spotless public spaces for the unvarnished reality of North Korea’s countryside is a sobering experience. Despite years of sanctions and increasing international isolation, Pyongyang looks wealthier in 2018 than I have ever seen it in 15 years of travel to the North. [...] But once the train rolls past the industrial belt around the capital, it’s a story of grinding poverty that clashes with the official image projected in Pyongyang.

Berlin-based travel writer Tom Masters gets the rare opportunity of a train ride from the bustling metropolis (by comparison) of Pyongyang through the northern backcountry of the secretive nation across the border to Vladivostok in Russia: "Every station along the way is almost identical, with two giant portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hanging on its exterior, both smiling incongruously against the bleakness of their surroundings."

China tests driverless bus guided by sensor tracks in the road

2017-11-07T17:33:00-05:00

The Hunan city of Zhuzhou is currently testing out an unmanned train that doesn't run on rails. You know, like a bus. The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) is being dubbed by Chinese state media the "world's first smart rapid rail bus," whatever that means. The train/bus (trus?) was first shown off in June this year. It uses sensors to determine the dimensions of the road and make a virtual track for itself to ride along.

At first glance, Zhuzhou's Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system that's currently being tested promises to enjoy a brighter future (and less ridicule) than the Traffic Elevated "car-eating" Bus that the City of Qinhuangdao announced to much fanfare last summer — only to find it stalled and eventually discontinued just a few months later.

Swedish train gets officially named "Trainy McTrainface"

2017-10-19T17:11:00-04:00

It’s happened again. A public vote to name four trains running between the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg has resulted in one of the four being called Trainy McTrainface in an echo of the name chosen by the British public for the new polar research vessel.

Last year, the British public voted to name its new polar research vessel "Boaty McBoatface"—a decision that the British government quickly overturned in favor of the less comical name "RRS Sir David Attenborough."

Hopefully, Boaty McBoatface's legacy will live on in Sweden, where the public voted to name one of its trains, running between Stockholm and Gothenburg, "Trainy McTrainface"

"We saw pretty quickly that Trainy McTrainface was in the lead in the popular option. There was a bit of international attention on the vote, and I imagine that some people were quite delighted to get some revenge for the Boaty McBoatface thing," said Swedish rail company MTR marketing chief Peter Nasfi.

Proving to have a better sense of British humor than the UK government, neither the train company, nor the Swedish government, repealed the popular vote.

First Look at Rick Joy's Princeton Train Station

2015-02-13T10:55:00-05:00

Princeton University’s campus is, in Rick Joy’s words, “a beautiful sculpture garden of famous architects’ buildings.” Now Joy, the Tucson-based architect, has added his own sculpture to that garden, in the form of a train station made of blackened stainless steel and precast concrete.

Renown critic and photographer Fred Bernstein and Jeff Goldberg tag-team a first look at Rick Joy's built foray into public architecture and it's a real treat.

California finally breaking ground on first high-speed rail segment

2015-01-06T13:02:00-05:00

California's bullet-train agency will officially start construction in Fresno this week on the first 29-mile segment of the system, a symbol of the significant progress the $68-billion project has made against persistent political and legal opposition. [...] But the milestone marked by Tuesday's groundbreaking ceremony also will serve as a reminder of the enormous financial, technical and political risks still faced by the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco project.

China to Extend Railroad Into India Through Tibet

2014-07-25T13:49:00-04:00

China plans to extend by 2020 a railroad on the high trans-Himalayan plateau of Tibet to the borders of India, Bhutan and Nepal, according to a report in People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party [...] The planned lengthening was criticized by Tibet advocates who said it would bring too many ethnic Han migrants to Lhasa and other Tibetan areas.

Watch the Only Extant Footage of Union Station's 1939 Opening

2014-04-22T12:55:00-04:00

It was 75 years ago—the year Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were released and World War II began—that Los Angeles's lovely Union Station first opened for business. There was a big Downtown celebration on May 3, 1939 to mark the opening of what is viewed as the nation's last great rail station, and Ward Kimball, an award-winning Disney animator and part-time rail nerd (one of Disney's Nine Old Men and the man who created Tweedledee/Tweedledum and Jiminy Cricket), filmed the occasion.