High-Speed Rail Workshop
Title: High-Speed Rail Workshop
Location: Waterloo, Wisconsin
Description: Waterloo High School
865 N. Monroe Street, Waterloo, WI.
Start Time: 1630
Date: 2010-08-30
End Time: 1930
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High-Speed Rail Workshop
Title: High-Speed Rail Workshop
Location: Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Description: Sun Prairie Municipal Building
300 E. Main Street, Sun Prairie, WI.
Start Time: 1630
Date: 2010-08-25
End Time: 1930
Topics: State | No Comments »
COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL PROJECT SCHEDULED IN SUN PRAIRIE,
COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL PROJECT SCHEDULED IN SUN PRAIRIE,
WATERLOO
ADISON, Wis., Aug. 19 — The Wisconsin Department of Transportation issued the
following news release:
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is announcing two community
workshops to discuss the design process for the High-Speed Intercity Passenger
Rail project. The workshops are scheduled from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on August 25,
2010 and August 30, 2010. The August 25 workshop will be held at the Sun Prairie
Municipal Building, 300 E. Main Street, Sun Prairie, WI. The August 30 workshop
will be held at the Waterloo High School at 865 N. Monroe Street, Waterloo, WI.
At the workshop WisDOT and consultant staff will be available to discuss design
activities in the Milwaukee-Madison rail corridor. Staff is also interested in
hearing from the community on issues of concern to them as design continues to
get underway. The team preparing the planning and environmental studies for rail
stations in the corridor will also be on hand to answer questions about the
station development process.
The public is encouraged to attend the meeting, provide input and ask questions
concerning this project. Maps showing project corridor and potential station
sites will be on display.
If you are unable to attend the meeting, or would like more information, contact
Alyssa Macy at (414) 550-9407. Written comments regarding the project can be
mailed to Alyssa Macy, Wisconsin Department of Transportation, High-Speed
Passenger Rail Program Management Team, 433 W. St. Paul Avenue, Suite 300,
Milwaukee, WI 53203-3007. To request an interpreter for people who are deaf or
hard of hearing, please call 711, the Wisconsin Telecommunication Relay System,
at least three working days prior to the meeting. Ask the communication
assistant to contact Alyssa Macy of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation
at (414) 550-9407.
Please join us in support of high speed rail in Wisconsin at one of these events
Tony Dimond
WSLB Chairman
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Fast trains are under attack in Wisconsin!
Rail Leaders,
Fast trains are under attack in Wisconsin!
Scott Walker, the opposition candidate for Governor in Wisconsin, has launched a major attack against passenger trains in Wisconsin. Please ask your friends in Wisconsin to show their support for passenger rail expansion.
Wisconsin was awarded Recovery Act funds to extend the successful Amtrak Hiawatha from Milwaukee to Madison. Walker has promised to stop construction if he is elected.
This week, he held an anti-train rally in Milwaukee and began running TV ads promising to “stop this train”. He even set up a special website: http://www.NoTrain.com
The Midwest HSR set up an action page – http://www.midwesthsr.org/Wisconsin – where Wisconsin residents can show their support. Please forward this email to your friends and allies in Wisconsin and ask them to support passenger trains.
The action page is located at: http://www.midwesthsr.org/Wisconsin
In solidarity,
David Ossian Cameron
Assistant to the Director
Rail Conference
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
202-437-3177 cell
dcameron@teamster.org
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J.B. VAN HOLLEN ATTORNEY GENERAL NEWS RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release For More Information Contact:
July 26, 2010 Bill Cosh 608/266-1221
TWO CHARGED BY ELECTION FRAUD TASK FORCE MAKE INITIAL COURT APPEARANCE TODAY
MILWAUKEE – Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today that two individuals charged with election fraud arising out of the November 4, 2008, Presidential Election made their initial appearances before Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Grace Flynn this afternoon. David Lewis and Ramon Martinez were both charged by the Election Fraud Task Force, a collaborative effort between the Wisconsin Department of Justice, the Milwaukee District Attorney’s Office and the Milwaukee Police Department.
Both Lewis and Martinez are charged with one count of Voting by a Disqualified Person. Lewis is also charged with one count of Providing False Information to Election Officials. Both of these crimes are felonies. The complaint against Lewis alleges that he registered to vote at the polls on November 4, 2008, thereby certifying that he was a qualified elector. It also alleges that he then cast a ballot. At that time, Lewis was on an active period of probation for felony convictions in Milwaukee County. A separate complaint alleges that Martinez cast a ballot at the polls on November 4, 2008. At that time, Martinez was also on an active period of probation for felony convictions in Milwaukee County.
A felon on an active period of supervision for a felony offense is prohibited by state law from voting in any election.
Each individual charge carries a potential penalty of imprisonment up to 3 ½ years and a $10,000 fine. Preliminary hearings in both cases have been scheduled for August 2, 2010, at 8:30 a.m.
Prior to the November 2008 election, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm announced the creation of the Election Fraud Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional action team that evaluates, investigates and prosecutes complaints of electoral fraud. The Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office work cooperatively with local law enforcement and the Milwaukee Police Department as needed when investigation is required.
Copies of the criminal complaints can be accessed at:
http://www.doj.state.wi.us/news/files/Complaint-Lewis.pdf
http://www.doj.state.wi.us/news/files/Complaint-Martinez.pdf
A criminal complaint is a document accusing a person of a violation of criminal law. A defendant enjoys a presumption of innocence. The prosecution must prove its allegations at trial beyond a reasonable doubt.
Assistant Attorney General David W. Maas is representing the State.
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Bridge Safety Standards
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Federal Railroad Administration
49 CFR Parts 213 and 237 [Docket No. FRA 2009–0014, Notice No. 2] RIN 2130–AC04
Bridge Safety Standards
AGENCY
Administration (FRA), Department of Transportation (DOT).: Federal Railroad
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY: FRA is establishing Federal safety requirements for railroad bridges. This final rule requires track owners to implement bridge management programs, which include annual inspections of railroad bridges, and to audit the programs. This final rule also requires track owners to know the safe load capacity of bridges and to conduct special inspections if the weather or other conditions warrant such inspections.
DATES: This final rule is effective September 13, 2010.
Topics: Regulatory | No Comments »
Federal Railroad ACTION (NPRM).: Notice of proposed rulemaking
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Federal Railroad Administration
49 CFR Part 231 [Docket No. FRA–2008–0116] RIN 2130–AB97 Railroad Safety Appliance Standards, Miscellaneous Revisions
AGENCY
Administration (FRA), Department of Transportation (DOT).
: Federal Railroad ACTION (NPRM).: Notice of proposed rulemaking
SUMMARY
the regulations related to safety appliance arrangements on rail equipment in a manner that is expected to promote the safe placement and securement of safety appliances on modern rail equipment by establishing a process for the review and approval of existing industry standards. This process will permit railroad industry representatives to submit requests for the approval of existing industrystandards relating to the safety appliance arrangements on newly constructed railroad cars, locomotives, tenders, or similar vehicles in lieu of the specific provisions currently contained in part 231. It is anticipated that the proposed special approval process will further railroad safety. It will allow FRA to consider technological advancements and ergonomic design standards for new car construction and ensure that modern rail equipment complies with the applicable statutory and safety-critical regulatory requirements related to safety appliances while providing the flexibility to efficiently address safety appliance requirements on new designsin the future for railroad cars, locomotives, tenders, or similar vehicles.
Topics: Regulatory | No Comments »
Holocaust group faults VRE contract
Holocaust group faults VRE contract
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Some Holocaust survivors are criticizing Virginia Railway Express for awarding an $85 million contract to operate and maintain its trains to a company partly owned by the French railway that transported people to Nazi concentration camps.
View Only Top Items in This Story
The company, Keolis Rail Services America, also has submitted a bid to the Maryland Transit Administration to operate the MARC Brunswick and Camden lines now under CSX control, a Keolis official said. The five-year contract is pending, a MARC spokesman said.
A group of 269 American Holocaust survivors objects to Keolis and its majority owner, the French railway company SNCF, seeking public rail service contracts across the country, said Dale Leibach of Washington-based Prism Public Affairs, which he said is doing pro bono public relations for the group. SNCF, which has been partly owned by the French government since 1938, transported nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims from France to Nazi camps, according to historians.
Leibach said the group wants SNCF to describe, and apologize for, its role in the Holocaust and pay reparations to survivors and victims’ families before it or any of its subsidiaries receive U.S. government contracts. The group formed in 2000 via word of mouth as part of a class-action lawsuit filed against SNCF in New York. The lawsuit, which was refiled in 2006 and is pending, seeks reparations for property taken from Holocaust victims when they boarded SNCF trains.
VRE is the first U.S. rail system Keolis would operate, but the company is seeking to run commuter rail systems in California, in addition to the two MARC lines, according to Steve Townsend, president of Keolis Rail Services Virginia.
Townsend said he has never heard complaints that Keolis, which was founded in the late 1990s, is too closely connected to the Holocaust via SNCF.
“It’s quite a reach for someone to say Keolis has anything to do with World War II,” Townsend said. “It’s just not the nature of this company.”
‘Adds insult to injury’
But Holocaust survivor Leo Bretholz, 89, a Baltimore resident in the group, said Keolis remains tainted by SNCF’s part ownership until the French railway apologizes for the kind of stifling, packed freight car he escaped from as a 21-year-old. Bretholz, who lost 20 relatives in the Holocaust, said the SNCF train he and a friend jumped from after they pried apart rusty window bars in 1942 carried 1,000 people to Auschwitz. Keolis shouldn’t be granted any MARC contract until its parent company takes responsibility, he said.
“The survivors are taxpayers,” Bretholz said. “Why should we subsidize a company that has done us wrong? This adds insult to injury.”
Leibach said the survivors group didn’t discover the SNCF connection with VRE until after the VRE contract was awarded in October.
Peter Kelly, a Los Angeles lawyer hired by SNCF to help it pursue high-speed rail business in California, said the French government “has been very transparent” about its role in World War II. In response to legislation proposed in California that would require SNCF to disclose its Holocaust activities, Kelly said, the railway is having translated from French to English a 1,200-page report that it commissioned from an independent historian in the 1990s to detail its wartime work. He said SNCF will release that report online in about a month.
Kelly declined to give specifics of the report beyond saying, “SNCF’s assets were completely controlled by the Germans during World War II.”
He added, “We believe that the record of SNCF, when it’s fully disclosed, will result in SNCF being a welcomed partner in America.”
View Only Top Items in This Story
Michael R. Marrus, a University of Toronto law and history professor who has written extensively about Jewish persecution in Vichy France, said SNCF “became part of the Nazi war machine” after Germany defeated France in 1940.
Marrus said the French government took responsibility for the crimes of its World War II-era Vichy government in the mid-1990s and has paid reparations to survivors and victims’ families. Those payments have been slow to come and in many cases had to be forced by lawsuits, Marrus said. However, he said, he believes continuing to “stigmatize” SNCF more than 60 years after the atrocities were committed is “nonsensical.”
“No one in the SNCF now was making decisions back then,” Marrus said.
He said the controversy raises the same complicated historical questions as those surrounding whether the U.S. government owes reparations to African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved.
“At what point should one say there’s been an appropriate recognition of historical responsibility?” Marrus said. “There has to be a turning of the page at some point. I think we’ve reached that with SNCF.”
VRE spokesman Mark Roeber said the commuter rail system was unaware of any Holocaust connection before awarding the contract to Keolis. However, he said the information would have had little impact because Keolis’s bid was “head and shoulders above the others” in providing the best value under Virginia and federal procurement laws. He noted that Keolis is also owned by two other companies, a Canadian asset management company and a Paris-based private equity firm.
‘It’s a stretch’
“We’re doing business with a multinational corporation, not one just owned by the French” railway, Roeber said. Though Holocaust survivors “may have a legitimate beef with the French government,” he said, Keolis “has a proven record in public transportation. . . . I think it’s a stretch to say Keolis has some tie-in to what the French railroad may have done in World War II.”
Keolis began maintaining VRE trains June 26. Its conductors and engineers will take over July 12. VRE trains were previously operated and maintained for 17 years by Amtrak, which placed third in the bid competition, Roeber said.
The contract is renewable for two additional five-year terms if both VRE and Keolis choose to extend it, he added.
Maryland Transit spokesman Terry Owens said procurement law prohibits him from discussing the MARC contract or any possible bidders while the contract is pending.
But Del. Heather R. Mizeur (D-Montgomery) said she has asked Maryland Transportation Secretary Beverley K. Swaim-Staley to consider SNCF’s record when the state evaluates Keolis’s MARC bid.
“I don’t think we in good conscience can have Maryland survivors of this tragedy subsidizing their prosecutors, which would be the case if this contract were awarded,” Mizeur said. “I get that Keolis itself was not involved in World War II activities, but its 60 percent majority owner was.”
John P. Tolman
Vice President and National Legislative Representative
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
Teamsters Rail Conference
25 Louisiana Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
Office: (202) 624-8776
Cell: (216) 272-1246
Fax: (202) 624-3086
Topics: National | No Comments »
J.B. VAN HOLLEN ATTORNEY GENERAL NEWS RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release For More Information Contact:
July 5, 2010 Bill Cosh 608/630-4786
AMBER ALERT ACTIVATED
Milwaukee Police Looking for Javious Thicklen, Jaleiah Thicklen and Katera Thicklen
MILWAUKEE - The Wisconsin Department of Justice has issued an Amber Alert for the Milwaukee Police Department. Milwaukee Police are asking for your help to locate three missing children who are believed to be with their mother, Lavatta Smith. We have reason to believe that these children could be in danger and are seeking to locate the children and their mother as soon as possible.
Lavatta Smith and her children were last seen in the 6100 block of W. Baldwin Street. They were discovered missing during a fire investigation at their residence.
Missing are:
34 year old mother
Lavatta SMITH
physical description: 5’04″, 220lbs, medium complexion, curly wig, shaved head. Last seen wearing leopard shirt, beige pants, black sandals.
9 year old son
Javious THICKLEN
physical description: 4’00″, 70lbs, short natural hair. Last seen wearing a short sleeve brown t-shirt
7 year old daughter
Jaleiah THICKLEN
physical description: 4’00″, 70lbs, hair in french braids (one on each side of head). Last seen wearing a blue jean skirt.
4 year old daughter
Katera THICKLEN
physical description: 3’06″, 45lbs, hair in french braids (one on each side of head). Last seen wearing a purple shirt and purple pants.
SMITH maybe driving in a dark purple 1996 Ford Taurus bearing Wisconsin plates 234-GXG.
Additional information on the Amber Alert program can be found at http://amberalertwisconsin.org/. Wisconsin’s Amber Alert has been activated 18 times resulting in the successful recovery of 23 children.
Please contact the Milwaukee Police Department’s Sensitive Crimes Division at (414) 935-7402 with any information regarding these individuals.
All media calls should be directed to Annie Schwartz at the Milwaukee Police Department at (414) 935-7209.
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House Subcommittee Dramatically Increases Highway Spending
Note: July 31st release understated the Amtrak budget problem by $396 million, which is the net of the $446 million that Amtrak requested in March to begin acquisition of new cars and locomotives and a $50 million reduction in the FY 2011 figure for ADA compliance. In the release below, the corrected passages are bolded. Have a pleasant holiday weekend!
505 Capitol Ct. Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20002
Phone 202-408-8362 w Fax 202-408-8287 w narp@narprail.org w http://www.narprail.org
The immediate concern for passengers is Amtrak, where the subcommittee provided $833 million less than Amtrak requested. Moreover, the impact on most of Amtrak’s capital investment program will be exaggerated because two major components of the program-Americans with Disabilities Act station compliance at $231 million and debt service at $305 million-are fixed. This means that, if the subcommittee’s numbers hold, the balance of the capital program-including acquisition of new cars and locomotives–would receive $668 million or about $804 million (55%) less than Amtrak sought for “non-ADA, non-debt service” capital. At the same time, the operating budget will be tight, as Amtrak would be “level funded” with FY 2010, and thus $29 million or 5% below what the railroad requested.
Topics: National | No Comments »
