Free Republic

(IRN)-An environmental group is touting the fuel saving benefits of the train. In particular, the savings are measured based on the use of the Metra commuter rail system in the Chicago area: 34.8 million of gasoline a year, assuming all the train riders would have made all the same trips by car, with 1.3 people in the car each time, according to the group Environment Illinois. Metra served 77 million passengers in 2008, with ridership increasing an average of 1 percent per year since 2000. Its busiest line, the BNSF line between Aurora and Chicago, carries an average of 63,200...

GENEVA – A massive drilling machine called Sissi is about to chew through the last few inches of rock standing in the way of the creation of the world's longest tunnel. The expected completion Friday of the 57-kilometer (35.4-mile) Gotthard Base rail tunnel is being hailed as an environmental triumph as much as an unprecedented engineering feat. The $10 billion tube bores through the Gotthard massif, including the 8200-foot (2,500-meter) Piz Vatgira, along the route to Italy. It's part of a larger project to shift the haulage of goods from roads to rails, spurred mainly by a concern that heavy...

A federal court jury being selected today will consider claims by seven FMC Technologies employees that nooses found hanging at a plant symbolized discrimination and a hostile environment within the oil and gas equipment company. The seven, including six African-Americans and one West Indian, also allege in their lawsuit that co-workers used racial slurs and that complaints to human resources were ignored. Jury selection is set to begin today before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, for a trial expected to last about four weeks. “The employees have been treated poorly for years,” said Joe Alioto Veronese, an employment lawyer in...

More than 572,000 passengers took Amtrak between St. Louis and Chicago in the just-completed federal fiscal year, a 13.1 percent increase that made the route one of the fastest growing in the country. Springfield is among the stops on the route. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said Monday some of the increase — including a record 28.7 million passengers nationwide — resulted from the addition of refurbished cars as the carrier tries to accommodate a steady increase in demand. “It’s certainly notable that, despite gasoline prices that were significantly lower than in 2008, and an economy that is in recession or...

Amtrak set fiscal 2010 records for both ridership and ticket revenue. The rail carrier reports systemwide annual ridership of 28,716,857 passengers in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30 and $1.74 billion in ticket sales. Overall ridership was up 5.7 percent from fiscal 2009, while ticket revenue rose 9 percent. Amtrak, whose ridership has grown by 37 percent since 2000, is using its rising ridership to lobby for more federal funding to update its aging fleet.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Three economists — including one rejected by the Senate as too inexperienced to work at the Federal Reserve — have won the Nobel prize in economics for their work in explaining why markets sometimes don’t work so well. Specifically, Peter Diamond of MIT, Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics were honored for their insights into unemployment. It’s certainly a timely topic. Read MarketWatch’s related article on the 2010 prize. The problem with unemployment is that, theoretically, it shouldn’t exist. Efficient market theory says unemployed workers should always be able...

A group of passenger train enthusiasts, mostly from Massachusetts and Vermont, have been meeting for about a year, studying the possibility of a 110-mile rail service that would start in New London and travel through Uncasville, Norwich, Willimantic, Mansfield, Storrs and Stafford Springs in Connecticut and on to Palmer, Mass., Amherst and Brattleboro, Vt. The Palmer Railroad Coalition will hold an informational meeting on the idea for a Central Corridor Rail Line from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 26, at Union Station. The so-called Central Corridor Rail Line would run on tracks that currently carry freight between New London...

If politicians in states such as California, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin can’t stomach the idea of a high-speed rail system, the Obama administration should redirect billions of federal dollars to where they belonged in the first place: the busy Northeastern corridor, where population density and public appreciation for train travel both run high. When the administration handed out $8 billion in rail grants, New England came up mostly short, landing a mere 2 percent of the money. Yet many of the big winners in this competition hardly seem grateful. As The New York Times reported last week, Republican candidates for...

With 48 slain in first 6 months of 2010, 2009 toll of 80 may be exceededForty-eight Americans were killed in Mexico during the first six months of 2010 — a deadly pace that appears likely to exceed any previous year of homicides on record, according to the Houston Chronicle's analysis of the U.S. State Department's death registry. The tally doesn't include two Texans reported killed Sept. 30 in separate incidents in isolated areas of Tamaulipas, where the terrorist group known as the Zetas has been warring with their Gulf Cartel rivals in communities all along the Southeast Texas border. A...

TRENTON, N.J. — Gov. Chris Christie pulled back Friday on plans to cancel a nearly $9 billion rail tunnel linking New Jersey and Manhattan, agreeing after meeting with the U.S. transpiration secretary to listen to other options for one of the nation's largest public works projects. Secretary Ray LaHood met with Christie for nearly an hour at the New Jersey Statehouse a day after the governor decided to scrap the project dubbed Access to the Region's Core, or ARC, a move he said was aimed to protect the long-range financial interests of state taxpayers. "Gov. Christie and I had a...

At least six schools in Houston ISD received suspicious envelopes today with a white powdery substance that initial inspectors have determined is cornstarch. The Houston Independent School District has sent the substance to the city health department for follow-up testing to make sure it is the basic cooking material and is not, in fact, hazardous, according to HISD spokeswoman Sarah Greer Osborne. The schools that got the envelopes were Alcott, Anderson, Alemeda, Browning, Bastian, Barrick and possibly Blackshear, she said.

Molly's Trolleys, the old-fashioned trolley service popular with wedding parties, is closing its Pittsburgh office and ending services here Dec. 28 The red-and-green shuttles have been a common sight in Pittsburgh for 15 years -- the company's clients, it said in a press release, have included politicians, professional athletes and family reunion guests. Bridal and wedding parties account for the lion's share of business, accounting for more than 2,500 tours, or more than 160 weddings a year.

I've waited three years for this to happen. When Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 into law, something didn't sit right with me. A good chunk of my readers weren't too keen on it, either... At the time, I had a feeling that it wouldn't last. But what really surprises me is that most investors were completely unaware of it in the first place. I'm talking about Section 526.Section 526What, exactly, is Section 526? It's a small clause hidden deep within the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. According to Section 526, all federal agencies...

Governor Christie's move to scuttle the $8.7 billion Hudson River rail tunnel project has prompted a Trenton visit today by U.S. Transporta tion Secretary Ray LaHood to “discuss a path forward on the ARC tunnel project.” Christie's decision could also require the state to return nearly $300 million to the federal government - cash that has already been spent on the project, on which construction began in the summer of 2009. The move would cause the state to lose $3 billion in federal money earmarked for the tunnel, but Christie said he hopes to keep $3 billion that the Port...

A massive national effort is under way to upgrade our transportation infrastructure. While the current federal administration is setting the nationwide vision for rail travel, Michigan is dangerously close to falling out of the equation. Our state has routinely cut funding for Amtrak. Our rail service from Detroit to Chicago takes 5.5 hours, is unreliable and doesn't run frequently enough. We can no longer dodge this critical investment. Unless we want to be left behind, Michigan must show Washington we're truly committed to a comprehensive overhaul of our rail system. We must continue to modernize our rails now to attract...

PARIS — In an effort to prepare for competition on cross-Channel rail traffic, Eurostar said Thursday that it had awarded a hotly sought contract to upgrade its aging fleet of fast trains to a Germany company, Siemens. The announcement did not sit well in Paris, which had been backing a French champion, and officials sharply criticized the decision. The £700 million, or $1.1 billion, contract will provide Eurostar — which is majority owned by the French state through its ownership of the national railway S.N.C.F. — with 10 of Siemens’ sleek new Velaro e320 trains. Siemens beat out the A.G.V....

The new Amtrak train in Charlottesville celebrated its one-year anniversary with a Thursday morning party that brought together state and local officials and revealed— sort of— that what might have been a subsidized extension of the Northeast Regional train is actually making a profit.“They’ve exceeded all our expectations,” said Mayor Dave Norris at the October 7 event.Last October, the wheels began rolling with a promised three-year state subsidy as Amtrak brought one of its New York-terminating trains though Charlottesville and as far south as Lynchburg.By July, the train had doubled its goals with $5.2 million in revenue from 103,351 Virginia...

With his vigorous support for high-speed rail, President Obama is thinking about a better future. And so is the Department of Transportation. We're moving America forward for all Americans.The bottom line is that high-speed rail will deliver a more efficient downtown-to-downtown mobility; it will spur economic development; it will bring manufacturing jobs to the US; and it will move us to a cleaner, greener way of getting around.In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out even more grants to help write the next chapter in American innovation.We're talking about nothing short of transforming transportation much the same way the interstate...

The United States cannot be energy independent, according to Hunt Oil Co. chief executive Ray Hunt. "In my opinion the politicians who stand up and say, 'I'm going to work for energy independence,' they're not being truthful. Given the consumption of energy by the United States of America, we will never be independent," at least not in our life times, said Hunt, who also leads Hunt Consolidated Inc. ~~~SNIP~~~ "It is my opinion that hydrocarbons will continue to be the dominant fuel for the balance of our lives and probably our children's lives," he said. He added that alternative energy...

The state of OPECOn the campaign trail, President Obama promised to reduce US dependence on OPEC oil. Sadly, two years later, we have made little progress. The US continues to import more than 60 percent of its oil, almost half of which is supplied by member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In June 2010 alone, we imported 362 million barrels for a total price tag of $27 billion, accounting for 55 percent of the $49.9 billion trade deficit that month. In July 2010, we imported 388 million barrels of oil, marking the single largest import month...