On Saturday, October 19, 13 cars on a Canadian National train derailed west of Edmonton, Alberta, and three cars carrying liquefied natural gas leaked and burned. No injuries were reported. This accident follows a similar incident in July in which a train with 72 tank cars of crude oil derailed in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec. That derailment triggered a series of explosions that killed 47 people. The tank cars carrying the oil were non-pressure tank cars that meet specific DOT containment standards, classified as DOT-111 cars.
These incidents have attracted scrutiny from ...
The California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) issued its Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for Construction Package 2-3 (CP2-3) on October 10 and will be hosting an industry forum for the project on October 29, 2013. The RFQ calls for contractors to submit their qualifications to bid on the second phase of high speed rail construction, consisting of a 60-mile route from Fresno south to the Tulare-Kern County line near Bakersfield. The construction contract for the first 29 miles, from Madera to Fresno, was signed on August 19 of this year.
Firms will have until December 6 to ...
In anticipation of the US federal shutdown which occurred on October 1st, this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) on September 27th outlined its shutdown plan, which includes furloughs for more than 18,000 of its approximately 55,000 employees.
The various agencies within USDOT have been impacted differently by the shutdown, depending on the extent to which their activities are funded through the federal government’s annual appropriations process, which lapsed this year and resulted in the current funding gap that caused the shutdown.
The shutdown’s ...
The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and Infrastructure Corporation of America (ICA) have entered into a concession agreement under which ICA will operate and maintain ADOT’s 14 highway rest areas. The concession agreement is the first agreement ADOT has executed under its public-private partnership (P3) statute, which has been in place since 2009, and is one of several P3 opportunities ADOT is pursuing.
ADOT’s concession agreement with ICA went into effect on October 1st and has an initial term of five years. ADOT may, at its discretion, extend the term of the ...
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