NORTH BERWICK, Maine (AP) — A New Hampshire trucker hauling a load of trash was distracted and speeding before his tractor-trailer skidded more than 200 feet into the path of an Amtrak train, causing a fiery collision that killed him and injured several others in July, investigators concluded. (more)
The Department of Transportation announced Monday that the government will spend $450 million upgrading a 24-mile stretch of rail between Trenton and Brunswick, New Jersey, on the busy Northeast Corridor to allow Amtrak’s signature Acela trains to reach 160 miles-per-hour. (more)
Amtrak said Tuesday that it will top 30 million passengers for the first time this year on the way to setting a ridership record for the national passenger rail service. (more)
SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada trucking company under scrutiny for a fiery crash with an Amtrak train that left at least six dead has been cited repeatedly by state authorities for crashes, unsafe driving and operating a truck with tires so bald the vehicle had to be taken off the road. (more)
An Oregon woman says she feels “disrespected” after police pulled her off an Amtrak designated quiet car, according to KOMO News in Seattle. (more)
If it weren’t so sad, this story from the Washington Times would be too funny. It seems that money from President Obama’s $862,000,000,000 “stimulus” bill of two years ago has been spent to upgrade the Wilmington, Del., Amtrak station. Vice President Biden lobbied personally, we read, to get the funding for the station he has famously used ever since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. Now, Amtrak, grateful for his support, has all on its own initiative decided to name the spruced-up station the Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Amtrak station. (more)
NEW YORK (AP) – Train service along the Northeast Corridor from New York to Washington was being disrupted Saturday morning by an Amtrak low voltage problem. (more)
Today’s the big day for Amtrak’s Wilmington train station. It is being renamed in honor of Vice President and former Delaware Senator Joe Biden following major renovations made possible with stimulus funds. (more)
Today’s budget will flesh out the financial details of the president’s ardor for high-speed rail. In the stimulus package in 2009, in the State of the Union Address (where he argued for giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail) and via Vice President Biden’s speech on spending an additional $53 billion over the next six years, the administration has been arguing for a massive spending effort on trains as fast as planes instead of automobiles. But does it make sense? (more)
President Obama’s proposed $53 billion in additional spending for “high-speed rail” (on top of a previous $10 billion) is a testimony to the power of adjectives. (more)
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama waxed poetic about the need for speed — high-speed rail, that is. He sounded just like my liberal friends who passionately yearn for the wonderful railroads of Europe. It matters not that such systems are losing money, or that the U.S. is much larger and more spread out than any Western European country. (more)
On December 15, Amtrak will begin allowing passengers to travel with their firearms, permitting them to stow their unloaded guns in the checked baggage car of a train for the duration of the trip. (more)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Amtrak on Tuesday unveiled a $117 billion, 30-year vision for a high-speed rail line on the East Coast that would drastically reduce travel times along the congested corridor using trains traveling up to 220 miles per hour. (more)
ROCHESTER — The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers. (more)
For the first time, Amtrak is courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered travelers with a targeted $250,000 multimedia advertising blitz this summer. (more)
WASHINGTON – A Government Accountability Office study quietly released Thursday has bolstered a Republican senator’s efforts to force Amtrak’s rail service to accommodate gun toting riders or face shutdown, Raw Story has found. (more)
ABOARD THE HEARTLAND FLYER (AP) — Amtrak began an experiment Tuesday to let cows produce horsepower. (more)
Early morning on March 29, 2010, two female suicide bombers detonated the explosive devices they were carrying on subway trains in Moscow. Initial reports indicate that 37 individuals were killed and that 73 were injured. These attacks, likely the work of Chechen separatists, produced panic amongst passengers, disrupted service on Moscow’s massive subway system and brought a flood of police and special forces personnel out into the streets of the city. (more)
