Video of Senate Committee on Finance Discussion with Federal Railroad Administration Officials
The Rhode Island Senate Committee on Finance had a presentation and question and answer session with Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Officials on February 28. That video is now available. The interview with FRA officials took place via a webinar format. The FRA officials were not on site in the Senate Committee chamber. The presentation from FRA and questions from the Senate members however took place in real time in a one on one format.
From the FRA were Doug Gascon, Amishi Castelli, Rebecca Blatnica, and others.
You can watch a video of the meeting at this link at the Capital TV website. You’ll need to scroll down the page a little and click on the small video image. After you click on this smaller image, the video will load into the larger video area at the top of the page.
There is a related story at EcoRI News.
Visit Our Railroad Page For More On This Issue
March 3, 2017 @ 4:36 pm
That was awful … no answers to important questions. Every answer refers to tier 2 which is probably where this is going IMO based on the responses I heard. So we go blindly into a situation where they will then say it is too late to change. I’ll repeat
… That was awful!! On another note, can anyone direct me to a map of the proposed Kenyon to Davisville freight line?
March 5, 2017 @ 2:34 pm
We have only mapped the Bypass in Rhode Island in Charlestown, Westerly, and Richmond. The only maps available for the other areas are the simple maps available at the NEC Future website. Outside of the bypass, any new track segments follow existing tracks. So for instance two new tracks are proposed in East Greenwich. To see what is happening there, it helps to look at Google or Bing maps of existing conditions and you can see there isn’t room there to add two more tracks without removing houses and building in the East Greenwich Historic District.
The NEC Future maps are in an appendix to the FEIS at http://www.necfuture.com/pdfs/feis/appendix/app_aa.pdf. This has 71 pages of maps! You want the maps on page 32 and 33 of this pdf, but without overlaying these on more detailed maps as we have done for Charlestown, it’s hard to see what is happening.
This PDF at https://charlestowncitizens.org/wp-content/uploads/TrackandConstructionTypeProfilePreferredAlternativ.pdf tells you how many existing and new tracks are proposed in different segments in Rhode island. It shows one new track added from Kenyon to Davisville. This would run parallel to the existing track. So if you can find the existing track in the Great Swamp or at Kingston Station and then follow that with a Google or Bing map to see where that new track would go. We don’t know which side of the existing tracks would get the new track, or what other widening they might do