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The 2024 RIBA Stirling Prize — the annual honor of the UK's best new architecture — has been conferred to the London Underground system's new Elizabeth Line designs from Grimshaw, Maynard, Equation, and AtkinsRéalis. The official jury citation mentions ten separate Underground... View full entry
Some 400 miles of subway tracks, half of Metro-North’s Hudson Line and several Long Island Rail Road stations are in dire need of upgrades to stave off flooding and other extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, the MTA wrote in a report published on Wednesday.
The report, called the 20-year needs assessment, is a breakdown of the agency’s $1.5 trillion worth of transit infrastructure, and details which equipment planners believe most urgently needs fixing over the next two decades.
— Gothamist
The system, which is now (finally) on a more stable financial track, needs a litany of upgrades over the next two decades, according to the breakdown. A total of 350 of the 493 elevators operated by the MTA will need to be replaced in that timeframe. Another 6,300 rail cars and 100% of all... View full entry
A Manhattan federal judge on Friday approved a settlement to a class action lawsuit that locks the MTA into equipping 95% of subway and Staten Island Railway stations with elevators or ramps — with a deadline three decades away.
The approval by Judge Edgardo Ramos caps one part of a long-running push by advocates for people with disabilities to improve access to a transit system where merely a quarter of the nearly 500 stations comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
— The City
As The City reported, the ruling makes the terms of last June’s landmark settlement official. Judge Ramos told plaintiffs that he knows the push would be a “very difficult thing to achieve.” MTA officials currently plan the upgrades in stages, with 81 stations affected by 2024 as... View full entry
UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl have been selected by the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to lead the architecture and urban design of Project Connect, a major expansion of the city’s public transit system. The voter-approved investment includes new light rail, expanded bus routes, a subway, and more... View full entry
The MTA will consider a transformative project that would extend the upcoming Second Avenue Subway even further by routing it west below 125th Street and then further uptown, the agency announced this week. — Patch
The Second Avenue Subway is currently set to expand from its phase 1 completion, which wrapped up in January 2017 with the opening of the 72nd, 86th, and 96th Street stations. The decades-old project, which was originally proposed in 1920, moved into the next stage of the federal funding process... View full entry
Eight lucky winners have been awarded decommissioned BART cars, as BART announced these retired cars will be transformed into a retro video game arcade, a bike repair shop, and a beer garden at The Oakland A’s stadium. — SFist
In 2020, BART issued a request for proposals for the creative reuse of old train cars as they are taken out of service and replaced by their “Fleet of the Future” cars. The first of the BART’s 775 new train cars went into service in January 2018. The fate of the decommissioned cars, some... View full entry
After 58 years of service, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has now retired every single one of its remaining “Brightliners” (R-32 subway cars). Known for their shiny corrugated stainless-steel paneling, the Brightliners bid New York City farewell earlier this month, before they were taken by rail to be scrapped in Ohio. — Fast Company
A majority of the cars were retired over ten years ago, when more than a 1,000 of the R-32s were dumped in coastal areas in Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia to establish artificial reefs. The plan was meant to boost recreational fishing, which at the time generated billions in state and federal... View full entry
Blue Crow Media’s latest update to a series of influential design maps uses 50 select sites along the U-Bahn, Berlin’s invisible lifeline, as a means of looking into the social and economic impacts of architecture in 20th-century Berlin. Courtesy Blue Crow Media Featuring... View full entry
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest U.S. mass-transit provider, is running on borrowed time, facing budget and revenue challenges as federal aid is set to tap out in 2025, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, said in a report Tuesday. — Bloomberg
The announcement comes on the heels of a rough summer for the MTA, which is only now seeing its ridership climb past 50% of pre-pandemic levels as it weighs a controversial congestion pricing plan that would add $1 billion in revenue a year beginning in 2023. Interim boss Sarah Feinberg... View full entry
A Supreme-wrapped subway train has been added to the New York City MTA. This marks the second major collaboration between the two, following their 2017 MTA MetroCard release. Looks like Supreme is linking up with NYC & MTA again. This time full wrap on subway trains @DropsByJay @snkr_twitr @J23app... View full entry
A theatrical new subway station is gracing the Berlin stage after a dramatic opening Friday. The new Museumsinsel U-Bahn station is part of an expansion of the U5 that will connect the line into an area of the city called Museum Island. Swiss architect Max Dudler is behind the... View full entry
Los Angeles freeways are notorious soul-sucking pathways that most residents face daily. The infamous 405 freeway is considered one of the most "congested stretches of highway in the United States." However, as Forbes Staff writer Alan Ohnsman reports, there may be two solutions the city's... View full entry
A planned Los Angeles County subway extension could see the light of day six months ahead of schedule, as the social and economic shutdown put in place to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus strain prompts authorities to consider consolidating construction activities. A recent... View full entry
Michael Hertz, whose design firm produced one of the most consulted maps in human history, the curvy-lined chart that New York City subway riders peer at over one another’s shoulders to figure out which stop they want, died on Feb. 18 in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 87. — The New York Times
In an effort to boost ridership, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, North America's largest public transportation network, formed a committee under the leadership of John Tauranac in the mid-1970s to create a new, more appealing map for the New York City subway system and replace the... View full entry
Metro Oregon and Portland's TriMet are studying the possibility of creating a new below-ground transit route through the city's downtown. Planning for future growth, the organizations are working to link the Lloyd Center shopping mall on the eastern banks of the Willamette River with Southwest... View full entry
