PORTLAND, MAINE – The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) announced today that the Amtrak Downeaster achieved record breaking ridership of 574,404 passengers in calendar year 2019, a 7.8% increase from 2018. The previous ridership record of 546,056 passengers was set in 2017.
The Amtrak Downeaster experienced record ridership growth in 9 out of 12 months, according to NNEPRA Marketing Director, Natalie Bogart, who reported that August 2019 was the highest ridership month in Downeaster history. “August ridership of 60,944 was an all-time record and the first time that Downeaster ridership surpassed 60,000 passengers in a month.”
NNEPRA attributes the ridership surge to increased frequency to Freeport and Brunswick, improved reliability, as well as repeat riders. Amtrak Customer Satisfaction score of 91% suggests that people are not only riding the Downeaster, but are finding it to be enjoyable as well. When compared to Amtrak services throughout the country, passengers rank the Downeaster among the top services for friendliness, overall satisfaction, and quality of on-board food service.
“These results are particularly impressive,” stated NNEPRA Chairman, John Melrose. “We are committed to the continued growth of the Downeaster service and are working hard in 2020 to improve/ expand transportation alternatives to further enhance mobility to our citizens and support economic growth for Maine Businesses.”
For additional Amtrak Downeaster information or to purchase tickets visit: AmtrakDowneaster.com
Amtrak Downeaster, POR, 2016, 15th Anniversary of the Downeaster, Portland Intermodal Station, Chuck Gomez
WASHINGTON, WAS
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W) today announced the completion of its previously announced sale to affiliates of Brookfield Infrastructure and GIC.
Under the terms of the sale, each issued and outstanding share of G&W common stock converted into the right to receive $112 in cash. As a result of the completion of the sale, G&W’s common stock ceased trading on the NYSE prior to market open today and will no longer be listed for trading on the NYSE.
“This transaction is an excellent outcome for all G&W stakeholders,” said Jack Hellmann, Chief Executive Officer of G&W. “For our customers, employees, and Class I partners, the long-term investment horizon of Brookfield and GIC is perfectly aligned with the long lives of G&W railroad assets. We look forward to building on G&W’s track record of safety, service excellence and commercial growth as we become an important component of a portfolio of global infrastructure assets.”
About Genesee & Wyoming
G&W owns or leases 119 freight railroads organized in locally managed operating regions with 8,000 employees serving 3,000 customers.
G&W’s six North American regions serve 42 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces and include 113 short line and regional freight railroads with more than 13,000 track-miles.
G&W’s Australia Region serves New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia and operates the 1,400-mile Tarcoola-to-Darwin rail line. The Australia Region is 51.1% owned by G&W and 48.9% owned by a consortium of funds and clients managed by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets.
G&W’s UK/Europe Region includes the U.K.’s largest rail maritime intermodal operator and second-largest freight rail provider, as well as regional rail services in Continental Europe.
G&W subsidiaries and joint ventures also provide rail service at more than 40 major ports, rail-ferry service between the U.S. Southeast and Mexico, transload services, contract coal loading, and industrial railcar switching and repair. For more information, please visit www.gwrr.com.
About Brookfield Infrastructure
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, energy and data infrastructure sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We are focused on assets that generate stable cash flows and require minimal maintenance capital expenditures. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. Further information is available at www.brookfieldinfrastructure.com.
Brookfield Infrastructure is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with over $500 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.
About GIC
GIC is a leading global investment firm established in 1981 to manage Singapore’s foreign reserves. As a disciplined long-term value investor, GIC is uniquely positioned for investments across a wide range of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, private equity, real estate and infrastructure. In infrastructure, GIC’s primary strategy is to invest directly in operating assets with a high degree of cash flow visibility and which provide a hedge against inflation. GIC has investments in over 40 countries. Headquartered in Singapore, GIC employs over 1,500 people across 10 offices in key financial cities worldwide. For more information on GIC, please visit www.gic.com.sg.
First pilot project with Coradia iLint outside Germany
31 October 2019 – Alstom and the Province of Groningen, local operator Arriva, the Dutch railway infrastructure manager ProRail and the energy company Engie have signed plans for a pilot project to test the Coradia iLint, the world’s first passenger train powered by hydrogen fuel cells, for the first time in the Netherlands. The signature took place as part of the “Klimaattop”, or Climate Summit Northern Netherlands, taking place this week in Groningen.
The tests will be carried out on the track between Groningen and Leeuwarden at up to 140 km/h and will last about two weeks. The ambition is to organise the test during the first quarter of 2020. The objective is to demonstrate that hydrogen fuel cell technology is an appropriate way to achieve zero-emission rail traffic on non-electrified lines in the Netherlands where there are currently diesel trains running.
“Alstom is committed to developing and implementing mobility solutions that permit not only the emergence of fully sustainable transport systems but also help drive the broader energy transition. We look forward to demonstrating what has already been proven in Germany – that hydrogen represents a highly suitable way forward in both cases,” said Bernard Belvaux, Managing Director of Alstom Benelux.
The Coradia iLint is the world’s first passenger train powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, which produces electrical power for traction. The train is quiet and emission-free, emitting only water and steam during operation. It represents a clean alternative for railway operators and regional authorities wishing to replace diesel fleets for operation on non-electrified lines and meet ambitious zero-emission objectives.
The world’s first two hydrogen trains have already been in regular passenger service in Lower Saxony in Germany since September 2018. The local transport authority LNVG will operate 14 Coradia iLint trains on that line from 2021. Also in Germany, RMV this ordered 27 Coradia iLint – the largest fleet of hydrogen trains in the world – for operation from 2022.
The Dutch railway network has approximatively 1,000 kilometres of non-electrified line.
All six people on board an Airbus H125 (AS350B3e) civilian helicopter that crashed in northern Norway on Saturday afternoon have died, the police reported on Sunday. According to reports, the helicopter was operated by the Norwegian company Helitrans. There were five passengers from Norway, all in their early twenties, plus a Swedish pilot. One survivor found at the crash site southwest of Alta later passed away at the hospital.
The crash occurred in Skoddevarre, near Alta, Finnmark. The helicopter was operating local sightseeing flights during the “Høstsprell” local music festival.
FILE PHOTO: A Fiat Chrysler Automobiles sign is seen at the U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan,
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) – Fiat Chrysler plans to invest 700 million euros ($788 million) in an electric makeover of its iconic Fiat 500, a top executive said on Thursday, as the automaker seeks to move on from its failed bid to merge with France’s Renault.
FCA’s chief operating officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Pietro Gorlier, announced the investment – the Italian-American company’s biggest single bet on an electric vehicle – at its Mirafiori plant in Turin, northern Italy.
“The plan is confirmed,” Gorlier told reporters, when asked if FCA’s investment in electric vehicle technology would remain unchanged after its $35 billion plan to merge with Renault, an electric car pioneer, collapsed last month.
He said FCA would invest the 700 million euros to build a new production line at Mirafiori to turn out 80,000 of the new 500 BEV, its first battery electric vehicle to be marketed in Europe after a smaller, initial foray in the United States.
Production will start in the second quarter of 2020, with capacity to be expanded later, Gorlier said.
The 500 compact car is one of the group’s most famous models, launched by then Fiat in the late 1950s and quickly becoming a symbol of Italian urban design.
The 700 million euros investment is part of a plan announced last year to invest 5 billion euros in Italy up to 2021.
In abandoning its merger offer for Renault, FCA blamed French politics for scuttling what would have been a landmark deal to create the world’s third-biggest automaker.
($1 = 0.8878 euros)
(By Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Mark Potter)
CHICAGO – Amtrak today marked the 90th
anniversary of the Empire Builder,
which travels across the country’s northern tier, allowing customers to
experience the grandeur of the Mississippi River Valley, Great Plains, Rockies
and the Cascade Range. Daily service between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest
provides a vital intercity travel option connecting more than 40 communities in
eight states.
Sleeping car customers received wooden train whistles from Amtrak Guest Rewards and all customers departing Chicago received commemorative certificates signed by Amtrak President & CEO Richard Anderson. Prints of a new Empire Builder painting by railroad artist J. Craig Thorpe are available in the Amtrak store and, for a limited time, other items to recognize the anniversary of the service are also available from Amtrak.
Inaugurated by the Great Northern Railway (GN), the first westbound Empire Builder departed Chicago on the evening of June 10, 1929, but it was christened the next day in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the GN had its headquarters and where its mainline to Seattle began. The premier service was named for James J. Hill–the “Empire Builder,” who in the late 19th century founded what became the GN.
The GN and three railroads merged in 1970 to form the
Burlington Northern, which continued to operate the Empire Builder until May 1, 1971, when newly-formed Amtrak took it
over and changed the route to include Milwaukee by using what is now the
Canadian Pacific Railway between Chicago and St. Paul. In October 1979, it
became the first overnight train to be assigned bi-level Superliner® railcars,
setting a higher travel standard that continues today.
Last year, 428,854 customers rode the Amtrak Empire Builder, Trains 7/27 & 8/28.
DHL Express introduced the first plane in a new line of Boeing aircraft based at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, which will gradually replace the company’s older intercontinental fleet.
The first aircraft in an order of 14 Boeing 777 freighters took off on its commercial maiden flight May 25 from the DHL Express hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Bahrain. Three more 777 Freighters will arrive this year to continue replacing DHL’s previous Boeing 747-400 aircraft for intercontinental flights.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – All 13 people aboard were killed when a private jet crashed between the U.S. city of Las Vegas and Monterrey in northern Mexico, authorities said on Monday.
The wreckage of the plane was found via aerial surveillance in a remote mountainous zone in the northern municipality of Ocampo, the government of Coahuila state said in a statement.
A photograph published on local television network Milenio showed what it said were the burnt remnants of the plane, broken into pieces, spread over charred earth.
The Coahuila government said the flight plan listed 13 people on board. It said no survivors were found.
Mexican media reported that the passengers had been to a boxing match between Mexican boxer Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and U.S. fighter Daniel Jacobs in Las Vegas on Saturday.
The nationalities of the victims were not immediately clear. The surnames of the three crew and 10 passengers published by the Coahuila government were all Hispanic.
The victims were aged between 57 and 19, according to a version of the passenger list published in Mexican media.
Newspaper Diario de Yucatan said on its website that among the victims were 55-year-old businessman Luis Octavio Reyes Dominguez, his wife, and their three children.
In a statement, Canada’s Bombardier Inc identified the jet as a Challenger 601 and said the plane had gone missing about 150 nautical miles from the northern Mexican city of Monclova.
Expressing its condolences to the victims, the company said it had been in touch with Canada’s transportation safety board and would work with the investigating authorities.
Mexican broadcaster Televisa reported the twin-engine jet lost contact on Sunday with air traffic controllers sometime after 5:20 p.m. local time (2220 GMT) as the pilot descended to avoid a storm.
Francisco Martinez, an emergency services official in Coahuila, told Milenio recent adverse weather conditions would form part of the investigation into the crash. However, he stopped short of saying weather had caused it.
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon, Noe Torres, Ana Isabel Martinez, David Alire Garcia and Allison Lampert; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown)
MONTREAL (Reuters) – Canada’s Bombardier Inc said on Thursday it would unite its corporate and regional jet-making units into a single aviation division, as it continues focusing on its strongest businesses while shedding aerostructure facilities in Belfast and Morocco.
The announcement comes ahead of an annual general meeting later in the day, where the plane and train maker is expected to face questions from investors on whether its turnaround plan is still on track as its transportation unit grapples with delayed rail contracts.
Investors were rattled last week when Bombardier cut its first-quarter and full-year revenue targets for the transportation division, its largest unit, raising concerns over whether it will still meet its 2020 targets of boosting margins and generating $20 billion (£15 billion) in revenue.
Bombardier on Thursday posted first-quarter revenue and profit, in line with revised expectations issued a week ago, when it sharply cut estimates for full-year profit and revenue.
It had slashed its full-year transportation revenue forecast by almost 8 percent to about $8.75 billion.
The company said in a statement it was making progress toward completing five long-term rail projects that have been marred in some cases by delivery delays and production problems, but these would take a few more quarters for completion.
Bombardier’s planned sale of its Belfast wing and structure-making operation, the largest high-tech manufacturer in Northern Ireland which employs 3,600, stunned workers who called on the British government to retain jobs.
A separate facility which produces aeronautical-equipment in Morocco will also be sold.
Under Chief Executive Alain Bellemare, Bombardier has been selling off businesses, including the money-losing Q400 turboprop program, to focus on more profitable units like rail and corporate jets.
The rail division, which is expected to generate $10 billion next year, is crucial to Bombardier’s five-year turnaround plan, after heavy investment in aircraft production drove it to the brink of bankruptcy in 2015.
Besides creating a single aviation division headed by business aircraft president, David Coleal, the company said it will consolidate its five aerostructures businesses to focus on facilities in Montreal, Mexico and its newly acquired Global 7500 business jet wing operations in Texas.
Bombardier’s commercial aircraft president Fred Cromer will continue to lead efforts as the company weighs the future of its money-losing regional jet program.
Some investors have questioned Bombardier’s credibility in revising its financial guidance after a recent debt raise.
“The concern, particularly after the March debt raise, is whether management remains committed to its longer term 2020 guidance,” said Toronto-based AltaCorp analyst Capital Chris Murray by email.
“We expect that during that process, the company had reiterated prior 2019 guidance, which it changed last week, adding to concern on the part of bondholders.”
A Bombardier spokesman declined to comment and said management would address questions at the meeting.
Bombardier said it continues to expect full-year free cash flow to be breakeven, plus or minus $250 million, as Global 7500 aircraft and key transportation project deliveries are expected to accelerate in the second half of the year.
Adjusted core earnings rose by $1 million to $266 million in the three months to March 31, while revenue fell 13 percent to $3.52 billion.
(Reporting By Allison Lampert in Montreal. Additional reporting by Arathy Nair in Bengaluru and Fergal Smith in Toronto; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Bernadette Baum)
FILE PHOTO: Logo of Bombardier is seen at an office building in Zurich, Switzerland February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
(Reuters) – Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N), one of the biggest U.S. railroads, on Thursday reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit and said efficiency gains will bolster profits in 2019.
Shares in the company, which connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the United States by rail, rose 3.3 percent to $159.37.
Its operating ratio – a measure of operating expenses as a percentage of revenue and a key metric for Wall Street – improved 1.1 points to 61.6 percent in the fourth quarter from the same period last year, the company said.
A lower ratio means more efficiency and higher profitability.
“We expect (2019) operating margins will increase as a result of solid core pricing gains and significant productivity benefits,” Chief Executive Lance Fritz said in a statement.
The Omaha, Nebraska-based company this month hired former Canadian National Railway Co (CNR.TO) executive and turnaround expert Jim Vena as its chief operating officer and said its operating ratio would fall below 60 percent by 2020.
Vena worked with Hunter Harrison, who led the revival of two Canadian railroads and died in 2017 after a short stint as CEO of CSX Corp (CSX.O), which recently set a 2019 target for a sub-60 percent operating ratio.
Union Pacific is cutting jobs, consolidating businesses and selling a corporate retreat to drive costs lower.
On a conference call on Thursday, Vena said “everything is on the table” as Union Pacific looks for further efficiency gains.
“I know the railroad has a vision in place to get to a 55 operating ratio already, and we’ll be working aggressively towards that goal,” Vena said.
Net income fell to $1.55 billion, or $2.12 per share in the fourth quarter, from $7.28 billion, or $9.25 per share, a year earlier when the company received a boost from changes in U.S. tax laws.
Freight revenue in the quarter rose 6 percent, lifting total operating revenue to $5.76 billion from $5.45 billion. Net core pricing was up 2.5 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Analysts, on average, expected a profit of $2.06 per share and revenue of $5.74 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Terminal dwell, the amount of time rail cars sit idle in a terminal, was 26.7 hours for the quarter, an 18 percent improvement versus a year ago.
Union Pacific and Berkshire Hathaway-owned (BRKa.N) BNSF are the largest U.S. freight rail operators with annual revenue of more than $20 billion each.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber, Steve Orlofsky and Will Dunham)
