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Last week marked the long-awaited debut of Woods Bagot’s remake of the 115-year-old Sydney Central Rail Station. The project, which came together over five years with help from collaborators John McAslan + Partners, expands passenger capacity by more than 60% while placing an elevated customer... View full entry
The penultimate segment of the forthcoming California High-Speed Rail connection from Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area has been approved for construction. The stretch begins at Palmdale in northern LA County and connects to Burbank. It will be followed by the final link between... View full entry
The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced $6.1 billion in funding for two high-speed rail projects in Nevada and California that will make history upon their respective completions at the end of the decade. Both the $8 billion Brightline West plan connecting Southern California to Las... 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
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has been awarded more than $200 million from the Biden Administration in what is one of the largest pieces of federal funding awarded to the project in its history.
The $202 million grant was made by the U.S. Department of Transportation through the 2022 Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program — part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021.
— KTLA
The latest funding reduces some of the $128 billion burden incurred by the project, which had been teetering on the edge before the state allocated enough funding to complete a critical 171-mile stretch in California’s Central Valley. The federal money will be put specifically towards six grade... View full entry
A joint venture of Foster + Partners and Arup will design the first four California High-Speed Rail stations in the state’s Central Valley region, the firms announced this week. The plans they are developing for the transit organization will eventually deliver stations in Fresno... View full entry
The price tag for the rail system has risen to $128 billion, according to a California High Speed Rail Authority project update report — a nearly 22% uptick from the previous figure of $105 billion from last year and a far cry from the $33 billion cost voters approved in 2008. The latest increases are due to “inflation/escalation, enhanced scope definition and greater contingency for risk,” per the report. — Construction Dive
The cost imbalance has reportedly pushed back the Merced-to-Bakersefield segment’s targeted start of service from 2030 by up to three years, according to the CEO of the Rail Authority Brian P. Kelly. Plans now are for at least the 119-mile segment that’s currently under construction in the... View full entry
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. — The Mercury News
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... View full entry
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 New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— KOVR Sacramento
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... View full entry
Conway confirmed what several mathematicians have noticed since the station’s unveiling: the pattern on the façade follows the logic not of Conway’s Life but of Wolfram’s Rule 30, a different cellular automaton identified by the computer scientist Stephen Wolfram. — Quartz Media
Atkins designed £50m Cambridge North railway station, a 4,843 sq ft building with three platforms and parking, opened this May.Its aluminum façade was inspired by The Game of Life, a cellular automaton that a British mathematician John Horton Conway developed in 1970. Conway, nevertheless... View full entry
Deutsche Bahn, a German-based railway and logistics company that transports about seven million train passengers every day ... plans to operate fleets of autonomous vehicles that could be ordered via an app, much people already do when they order a ride-hailing service like Uber. These driverless cars would be used to pick people up and bring them to public transit stations, solving the so-called “last mile” problem. — fortune.com
More news on automated vehicles and public transit:Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehicles"In LiDAR We Trust" – Poking the subconscious of autonomous vehicles with special guest Geoff Manaugh, on Archinect Sessions #43Beverly Hills wants to provide... View full entry
Beginning in 2017, the London transit hub that's been described as "a dingy, grey, horizontal nothingness"* will undergo a massive redesign to incorporate a new high-speed rail line connecting London and Birmingham.The first phase of the so-called HS2, connecting London and Birmingham... View full entry
The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the farther you travel from Moscow. [...]
A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil.
— Business Insider
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.
— latimes.com
