Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. • London’s other massive tunnel under construction (E&T) • London’s lost canal network (Londonist) • How Roman roads predict modern day prosperity (WashingtonPost) • Vancouver’s multi-modal success story (StreetFilm) • New York City Subway signage & design highlights (TheBeautyOfTransport) • US National Links: Cars Behaving Badly (TheOverheadWire) • Transport barriers to employment in low-income neighbourhoods ...

Most metro stations around the world rely on stairs for access to platforms. These are easy to build, especially for stations not far below the surface. However, this arrangement offers no accessibility for many people with disabilities — not only people who are permanently wheelchair-bound, but also passengers who have chronic pain, who rely on walking aids or who are temporarily injured. Furthermore, passengers carrying heavy luggage, such as those bound for airports, might prefer to avoid ...

Electric scooters taking US cities by storm are illegal on British roads, symptomatic of English legislation that dates back to the year of Mark Twain’s birth — and still in force today. But in the business world it’s more than just an irritation. U.S. e-scooter startup Bird is struggling to get a pilot program underway in London, after trying for months to win over the city’s transit regulator and adhere to highway legislation. Executives at the company, based in Los Angeles and most ...

For the past decade, the transit center that will replace San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal has been the subject of grand plans and political controversies, struggles to stay on schedule and squabbles over costs. Next weekend, all that changes. On Aug. 12, transbay bus service will begin at the $2.16 billion Transbay Transit Center, which stretches nearly three blocks between Beale and Second streets, just south of Mission Street. East Bay commuters entering the city by bus will travel ...

Delivery of the 100 Avelia Horizon trainsets to SNCF will run from 2023 to 2033. Branded Avelia Horizon by Alstom, the double-deck trains will be acquired at a cost of €25m per trainset, which SNCF [Société nationale des chemins de fer français] says is €5m cheaper than the list price for the current TGV [trains de grande vitesse] Duplex design. The total order value is €2.7bn, which includes an allocation of €170m for maintenance and contract options. News of the planned order broke ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. • The Tube’s spiral escalator (LTMuseum) • The London walker’s Tube map (Londonist) • Manchester considering High Line on rail viaduct (Confidentials) • Story of classic three-wheel Reliant Regal Supervan (E&T) • How cars divide America (CityLab) • US National links: Helsinki the leader (TheOverheadWire) • Historical Melbourne tram map destination posters (TransitMaps) • Vancouver wants tunnelled SkyTrain from Arbutus ...

Fighting heat in the underground – Rail Technology Magazine (RTM) looks at the successes of the Cooling the Tube programme so far and what TfL hopes to achieve in the coming years. Despite what was a relatively mild summer, in this year’s June/July edition we decided to take a look at the reasons behind the sweltering temperatures in London’s underground rail network. For the millions of residents and tourists jumping on-board jam-packed Tube trains, temperatures in the Underground are ...

The second Thursday of the month brings with it our meetup, which happens next on 9th August from 6pm. As always, these are informal affairs where the beer flows, offering an opportunity to put faces to the names of a few LR writers as well as regular commentators. All are welcome, and conversation is often as much general as it is transport-specific. Where to find us We will be in the upstairs backroom at The Royal Oak on Tabard Street. Its location makes it easy to get to from a number of ...

President Donald Trump was in an unusually bipartisan mood on September 7 [2017], when he convened a White House meeting about a massive project to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River. He was still basking in the glow of a surprise deal he had cut the day before with top congressional Democrats, avoiding a government shutdown and generating a flurry of positive press. Now he was huddling with a bipartisan group of politicians from his home base of New York and New Jersey about the ...

Gazing at the vast expanse of marble and stainless steel spanning the new concourse over one hundred feet below Grand Central Terminal, you could almost feel the rumble of the Long Island Rail Road trains that have been so long in coming. And for a moment it’s easy to become enraptured by the biggest public works project in our lifetime. But no trains are arriving at this station any time soon. This is the promise of East Side Access, the decades-long, multi-billion-dollar project that would ...

Bird, the scooter start-up that became a Silicon Valley unicorn seemingly overnight, wants to chip in to fund bike lanes in cities. Patrick Sisson at Curbed reports that the company has pledged to contribute $1 per scooter per day into a fund that will pay for projects that carve out street space where its users can ride without getting intimidated by drivers or aggravating people on sidewalks. The company urged other scooter and bike-share firms to do the same. Bird will also convene a ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. • Bethnal Green tube heraldry (ALondonInheritance) • Milan’s 1980s new Metro promo film (CityLab) • Bus map that looks like an IBM mainframe diagram (TransitMaps) • US National links – small town Texas revival (TheOverheadWire) • Cities and the vertical economy (CityLab) • American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage (StreetsBlog) • Subway mess caused by MTA Typo (VillageVoice) • Local TV station renovated a 120-year-old train ...

Alstom aims to deliver “seamless connectivity” with purchase of Wi-Fi and infotainment company. The French train manufacturer Alstom is signalling its commitment to improving the reliability and speed of wireless connections on its trains, after the company signed an agreement to purchase a provider of on-board Internet and passenger infotainment. The purchase of 21net, which has offices in Belgium, France, UK, India and Italy and which last year turned over around £14m (€16m), was backed ...

You want to reopen a disused rail line. You’ve got permission to do so, you have organised to close, re-route or otherwise deal with rights of way over the infrastructure and you have found a way to deal with the housing development that’s been built on the route and sorted out the design and construction or refurbishment of track and signalling systems. The challenges are similar if you want to improve mobility in a town or city. Once you’ve sorted the infrastructure, you need to choose ...

The rail networks between London, Paris and Brussels will all receive ERTMS after the infrastructure managers together coordinate a development plan. Michel Boudoussier, Getlink Chief Corporate Officer, Dyan Crowther, HS1 CEO, Patrick Jeantet, SNCF-Réseau President and Luc Lallemand, Infrabel CEO, have committed to join forces to coordinate the deployment of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) across all their networks. The high-speed routes between London, Paris and Brussels, ...