Indonesia is launching Southeast Asia’s first-ever bullet train on Sunday, a high-speed rail service line that will connect two of the country’s largest cities.
Part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and largely funded by Chinese state-owned firms, the $7.3 billion project opened to the public on Sunday, following a series of delays and setbacks.
The train will travel between the capital Jakarta and Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s second-largest city and a major arts and culture hub.
The 86-mile (138-kilometer) high-speed rail line, officially named WHOOSH – which stands for “time saving, optimal operation, reliable system” in Indonesian – runs on electricity with no direct carbon emissions and travels at a speed of roughly 217 miles per hour – cutting travel time between Jakarta and Bandung from three hours to under less than an hour, officials say.
Overseen by the joint state venture PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (PT KCIC), the train travels between the Halim railway station in East Jakarta and Padalarang railway station in West Bandung, and is well connected to local public transport systems.
The trains, modified for Indonesia’s tropical climate, are equipped with a safety system that can respond to earthquakes, floods and other emergency conditions, officials added.
There are talks to extend the high-speed line to Surabaya – a major port and capital of East Java Province, PT KCIC director Dwiyana Slamet Riyadi told Chinese state media outlets at a ceremony earlier in September.
Stops at other major cities like Semarang and Yogyakarta, the gateway to Borobudur – the largest Buddhist temple in the world – are also being planned, Dwiyana said.
According to information released by PT KCIC, the railway features eight cars – all equipped with Wi-Fi and USB charging points – and seats 601 passengers.
There will be three classes of seats – first, second and VIP.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest country and Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has been actively and openly courting investment from China, its largest trade and investment partner.
A high-profile meeting in July between Indonesian and Chinese leaders Joko Widodo and Xi Jinping unveiled a series of projects, including plans to build a multi-billion dollar Chinese glass factory on the island of Rempang in Indonesia’s Riau Islands Archipelago as part of a new ‘Eco-City,’ sparking weeks of fierce protests from indigenous islanders opposed to their villages being torn down.
Widodo and Chinese Premier Li Qiang were photographed taking test rides on the new high-speed railway throughout September.
The train deal was first signed in 2015 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and construction began later that year.
It was initially expected to be completed in 2019 but has faced multiple operational delays as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as land procurement and ballooning costs.
PT KCIC’s director Dwiyana hailed the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway as an “outstanding example of bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and China.” It will not only improve Indonesian infrastructure but “promote the development of Indonesia’s railroad and manufacturing industries,” he said.
Editor’s Note: This timeline is not all-inclusive. Selected rail incidents with at least 200 fatalities are listed, plus US incidents.
CNN
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Here’s some background information about major rail accidents since 1900.
January 1915 – Guadalajara, Mexico: More than 600 people die when a train derails into a ravine during a steep descent.
May 22, 1915 – Gretna, Scotland: The United Kingdom’s worst rail disaster occurs when three trains collide at Quintinshill, resulting in 227 deaths, many of whom were soldiers of the Royal Scots.
June 1915 – Montemorelos, Mexico: A military train derails into a canyon, killing more than 300.
December 12, 1917 – Modane, France: 427 people die when a train carrying more than 1,000 soldiers derails in the French Alps.
January 16, 1944 – León Province, Spain: A train wrecks in the Torro tunnel, killing more than 500 people.
March 2, 1944 – Near Salerno, Italy: At least 521 people die from carbon monoxide fumes when a train stalls in a tunnel.
October 22, 1949 – Poland: More than 200 are killed when the Danzig-Warsaw express derails.
April 3, 1955 – Guadalajara, Mexico: About 300 die when a night express train derails into a canyon.
September 29, 1957 – Montgomery, western Pakistan: 250 die when a passenger train collides with a cargo train.
February 1, 1970 – Buenos Aires, Argentina: The worst train disaster in Argentina’s history occurs when an express train crashes into a standing commuter train, killing 236.
October 6, 1972 – Saltillo, Mexico: 208 people die after a train traveling at excessive speed derails and catches fire.
June 6, 1981 – Bihar, India: India’s worst rail accident to date occurs during inclement weather when a train derails and plunges into a river in the state of Bihar, killing 800 and injuring more than 100.
January 13, 1985 – Near the town of Awash, Ethiopia: The government says that 392 people died when a passenger train derailed while crossing a bridge over a ravine.
June 4, 1989 – Ural Mountains, Soviet Union: 575 people die when a gas pipeline leaks, causing two passenger trains to explode.
January 4, 1990 – Sindh province, Pakistan: More than 210 people are killed after the Zakaria Bahauddin Express passenger train crashes into a stationary freight train.
September 22, 1994 – Tolunda, Angola: 300 die after malfunctioning brakes cause a train to derail and fall into a ravine.
August 2, 1999 – India: Brahmaputra Mail train en route to New Delhi slams into the idle Awadh-Assam Express at Gaisal Station in West Bengal, killing 285 and injuring more than 300.
June 24, 2002 – Tanzania: A runaway passenger train collides with a freight train and then derails, resulting in 281 deaths.
February 18, 2004 – Near the town of Neyshabur, Iran: A runaway 51-car chemical train derails and explodes, causing at least 320 deaths and hundreds of injuries to residents in the area.
December 26, 2004 – Sri Lanka: Between 1,500 to 1,700 passengers aboard the Samudradevi, or Queen of the Sea, train, are believed dead when the tsunami sweeps their train off the tracks.
March 1, 1910 – Wellington, Washington: An avalanche pushes a passenger train and a mail train into a ravine, killing 96 people.
July 9, 1918 – Nashville, Tennessee: Considered the worst rail disaster in US history, two passenger trains collide on Dutchman’s Curve, resulting in 101 deaths.
November 1, 1918 – Brooklyn, New York: At least 90 are killed when a Brighton Beach Train of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company derails inside the Malbone Street tunnel.
More than 200 people were killed and hundreds injured when three trains collided in India on Friday in one of the worst train crashes in recent history.
Two passenger trains and a goods train collided in the city of Balasore in easternOdisha state, according to state chief secretary Pradeep Jena.
At least 233 people died and 900 were injured in the impact, Jena said on Twitter.
The death toll is expected to rise as teams carry out a colossal rescue operation, Jena said during a news conference.
Images from the scene showed rescuers attempting to find survivors in a damaged rail carriage. Video footage also showed upturned coaches littered across train tracks, and people climbing a mangled train carriage.
Friday’s rescue effort included more than 115 ambulances and several fire service units, say authorities. About 500 units of blood were collected overnight with 900 units currently in stock, Jena wrote on Twitter.
“This will help in treating the accident victims. I’m personally indebted and grateful to all the volunteers who’ve donated blood for a noble cause,” he wrote.
The cause of the catastrophic crash has yet to be determined, Jena told CNN affiliate News18, emphasizing that the current focus is on ongoing rescue operations.
“We are only working (at) sending additional doctors, ambulances, buses, so all those things we are doing so we have not thought of asking what happened, how it happened,” he said.
The deadly collision occurred after one passenger train collided into coaches of an already derailed passenger train that had tossed into the opposite track, Indian authorities said.
Both trains then derailed.
“An unfortunate accident took place between Coromandel Express, a goods train and another passenger train near Bahanaga railway station in Balasore district,” Jena said.
“Around 7 p.m., 12841 Coromandel Express, which runs between Shalimar and Chennai, around Balasore, 10 to 12 of its coaches derailed and tossed over to the opposite track. After some time, another train, which runs between Yesvantpur and Howrah, dashed into those derailed coaches, which resulted in the derailment of its three to four coaches,” Railway Spokesperson Amitabh Sharma told reporters.
The Coromandel travels through India’s east coast, between West Bengal’s capital Kolkata to the South Indian city of Chennai.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences on Friday. “Distressed by the train accident in Odisha. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon. Rescue ops are underway at the site of the mishap and all possible assistance is being given to those affected,” he wrote.
India’s extensive rail network suffers from aging infrastructure and poor maintenance – factors that are often responsible for accidents.
The death toll from Friday’s crash has already surpassed that of an infamous crash in 2016 – one of the deadliest in recent years – when over 140 people were killed in a derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
In 2021, some 16,431 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country. “Majority (67.7%) of railway accident cases were reported (as) ‘Fall from trains /collision with people on track,” according to a 2021 report by the National Crime Records
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said he will visit the site of the accident on Saturday morning to review the situation, the department said.
The families of those killed on Friday will receive $12,136, India’s Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology has announced, with lesser amounts available to people who were injured in the crash.
High speed trains have proved their worth across the world over the past 50 years.
It’s not just in reducing journey times, but more importantly, it’s in driving economic growth, creating jobs and bringing communities closer together. China, Japan and Europe lead the way.
So why doesn’t the United States have a high-speed rail network like those?
For the richest and most economically successful nation on the planet, with an increasingly urbanized population of more than 300 million, it’s a position that is becoming more difficult to justify.
Although Japan started the trend with its Shinkansen “Bullet Trains” in 1964, it was the advent of France’s TGV in the early 1980s that really kick-started a global high-speed train revolution that continues to gather pace.
But it’s a revolution that has so far bypassed the United States. Americans are still almost entirely reliant on congested highways or the headache-inducing stress of an airport and airline network prone to meltdowns.
China has built around 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers) of dedicated high-speed railways since 2008 and plans to top 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) by 2035.
“Many Americans have no concept of high-speed rail and fail to see its value. They are hopelessly stuck with a highway and airline mindset,” says William C. Vantuono, editor-in-chief of Railway Age, North America’s oldest railroad industry publication.
Cars and airliners have dominated long-distance travel in the United States since the 1950s, rapidly usurping a network of luxurious passenger trains with evocative names such as “The Empire Builder,” “Super Chief” and “Silver Comet.”
Deserted by Hollywood movie stars and business travelers, famous railroads such as the New York Central were largely bankrupt by the early 1970s, handing over their loss-making trains to Amtrak, the national passenger train operator founded in 1971.
In the decades since that traumatic retrenchment, US freight railroads have largely flourished. Passenger rail seems to have been a very low priority for US lawmakers.
Powerful airline, oil and auto industry lobbies in Washington have spent millions maintaining that superiority, but their position is weakening in the face of environmental concerns and worsening congestion.
Some of this will be invested in repairing Amtrak’s crumbling Northeast Corridor (NEC) linking Boston, New York and Washington.
There are also big plans to bring passenger trains back to many more cities across the nation – providing fast, sustainable travel to cities and regions that have not seen a passenger train for decades.
Add to this the success of the privately funded Brightline operation in Florida, which has been given the green light to build a $10 billion high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas by 2027, plus schemes in California, Texas and the proposed Cascadia route linking Portland, Oregon, with Seattle and Vancouver, and the United States at last appears to be on the cusp of a passenger rail revolution.
“Every president since Ronald Reagan has talked about the pressing need to improve infrastructure across the USA, but they’ve always had other, bigger priorities to deal with,” says Scott Sherin, chief commercial officer of train builder Alstom’s US division.
“But now there’s a huge impetus to get things moving – it’s a time of optimism. If we build it, they will come. As an industry, we’re maturing, and we’re ready to take the next step. It’s time to focus on passenger rail.”
Sherin points out that other public services such as highways and airports are “massively subsidized,” so there shouldn’t be an issue with doing the same for rail.
“We need to do a better job of articulating the benefits of high-speed rail – high-quality jobs, economic stimulus, better connectivity than airlines – and that will help us to build bipartisan support,” he adds. “High-speed rail is not the solution for everything, but it has its place.”
Only Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor has trains that can travel at speeds approaching those of the 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph) TGV and Shinkansen.
Even here, Amtrak Acela trains currently max out at 150 mph – and only in short bursts. Maximum speeds elsewhere are closer to 100 mph on congested tracks shared with commuter and freight trains.
This year, Amtrak plans to introduce its new generation Avelia Liberty trains to replace the life-expired Acelas on the NEC.
Capable of reaching 220 mph (although they’ll be limited to 160 mph on the NEC), the trains will bring Alstom’s latest high-speed rail technology to North America.
The locomotives at each end – known as power cars – are close relatives of the next generation TGV-M trains, scheduled to debut in France in 2024.
Sitting between the power cars are the passenger vehicles, which use Alstom’s Tiltronix technology to run faster through curves by tilting their bodies, much like a MotoGP rider does. And it’s not just travelers who will benefit.
“When Amtrak awarded the contract to Alstom in 2015 to 2016, the company had around 200 employees in Hornell,” says Shawn D. Hogan, former mayor of the city of Hornell in New York state.
“That figure is now nearer 900, with hiring continuing at a fast pace. I calculate that there has been a total public/private investment of more than $269 million in our city since 2016, including a new hotel, a state-of-the-art hospital and housing developments.
“It is a transformative economic development project that is basically unheard of in rural America and if it can happen here, it can happen throughout the United States.”
Alstom has spent almost $600 million on building a US supply chain for its high-speed trains – more than 80% of the train is made in the United States, with 170 suppliers across 27 states.
“High-speed rail is already here. Avelia Liberty was designed jointly with our European colleagues, so we have what we need for ‘TGV-USA’,” adds Sherin.
“It’s all proven tech from existing trains. We’re ready to go when the infrastructure arrives.”
And those new lines could arrive sooner than you might think.
In March, Brightline confirmed plans to begin construction on a 218-mile (351-kilometer) high-speed line between Rancho Cucamonga, near Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, carving a path through the San Bernardino Mountains and across the desert, following the Interstate 15 corridor.
The 200 mph line will slash times to little more than one hour – a massive advantage over the four-hour average by car or five to seven hours by bus – when it opens in 2027.
Mike Reininger, CEO of Brightline Holdings, says: “As the most shovel-ready high-speed rail project in the United States, we are one step closer to leveling the playing field against transit and infrastructure projects around the world, and we are proud to be using America’s most skilled workers to get there.”
Brightline West expects to inject around $10 billion worth of benefits into the region’s economy, creating about 35,000 construction jobs, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs in maintenance, operations and customer service in Southern California and Nevada.
It will also mark the return of passenger trains to Las Vegas after a 30-year hiatus – Amtrak canceled its “Desert Wind” route in 1997.
Meanwhile, construction is progressing on another high-speed line through the San Joaquin Valley.
Set to open around 2030, California High Speed Rail (CHSR) will run from Merced to Bakersfield (171 miles) at speeds of up to 220 mph.
Coupled with proposed upgrades to commuter rail lines at either end, this project could eventually allow high-speed trains to run the 350 miles (560 kilometers) between Los Angeles to San Francisco metropolitan areas in just two hours and 40 minutes.
CHSR has been on the table as far back as 1996, but its implementation has been controversial.
Disagreements over the route, management issues, delays in land acquisition and construction, cost over-runs and inadequate funding for completing the entire system have plagued the project – despite the economic benefits it will deliver as well as reducing pollution and congestion. Around 10,000 people are already employed on the project.
Costing $63 billion to $98 billion, depending on the final extent of the scheme, CHSR is to connect six of the 10 largest cities in the state and provide the same capacity as 4,200 miles of new highway lanes, 91 additional airport gates and two new airport runways costing between $122 billion and $199 billion.
With California’s population expected to grow to more than 45 million by 2050, high-speed rail offers the best value solution to keep the state from grinding to a smoggy halt.
Brightline West and CHSR offer templates for the future expansion of high-speed rail in North America.
By focusing on pairs of cities or regions that are too close for air travel and too far apart for car drivers, transportation planners can predict which corridors offer the greatest potential.
“It’s logical that the US hasn’t yet developed a nationwide high-speed network,” says Sherin. “For decades, traveling by car wasn’t a hardship, but as highway congestion gets worse, we’ve reached a stage where we should start looking more seriously at the alternatives.
“The magic numbers are centers of population with around three million people that are 200 to 500 miles apart, giving a trip time of less than three hours – preferably two hours.
“Where those conditions apply in Europe and Asia, high-speed rail reduces air’s share of the market from 100% to near zero. The model would work just as well in the USA as it does globally.”
Sherin points to the success of the original generation of Acela trains as evidence of this.
“When the first generation Acela trains started running between New York City and Washington in 2000, Amtrak attracted so many travelers that the airlines stopped running their frequent ‘shuttles’ between the two cities,” he adds.
However, industry observer Vantuono is more pessimistic.
“A US high-speed rail network is a pipe dream,” he says. “A lack of political support and federal financial support combined with the kind of fierce landowner opposition that CHSR has faced in California means that the challenges for new high-speed projects are enormous.”
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), urban and high-speed rail hold “major promise to unlock substantial benefits” in reducing global transport emissions.
Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, argues that rail transport is “often neglected” in public debates about future transport systems – and this is especially true in North America.
“Despite the advent of cars and airplanes, rail of all types has continued to evolve and thrive,” adds Birol.
Globally, around three-quarters of rail passenger movements are made on electric-powered vehicles, putting the mode in a unique position to take advantage of the rise in renewable energy over the coming decades.
Here, too, the United States lags far behind the rest of the world, with electrification almost unheard of away from the NEC.
Rail networks in SouthKorea, Japan, Europe, China and Russia are more than 60% electrified, according to IEA figures, the highest share of track electrification being South Korea at around 85%.
In North America, on the other hand, less than 5% of rail routes are electrified.
The enormous size of the United States and its widely dispersed population mitigates against the creation of a single, unified network of the type being built in China and proposed for Europe.
Air travel is likely to remain the preferred option for transcontinental journeys that can be more than 3,000 miles (around 4,828 kilometers).
But there are many shorter inter-city travel corridors where high-speed rail, or a combination of new infrastructure and upgraded railroad tracks or tilting trains, could eventually provide an unbeatable alternative to air travel and highways.
Amtrak is restoring service after a slew of train cancellations, primarily in the Midwest due to “a rail-industry control system that continues to experience intermittent communications issues,” according to Amtrak spokesperson W. Kyle Anderson.
The industry control system is used to connect to other railroads, Anderson said. Amtrak trains can operate on freight rail lines, so the trains have to connect to freight railroads to begin their journey – that communication was down.
The system issues began early Friday morning, Amtrak said.
On Friday, Amtrak began tweeting that several trains – many in and out of Chicago – had been canceled. Amtrak’s alert feed on Twitter was still announcing cancellations Sunday morning.
CNN has reached out for comment on how many trains were canceled.
Rescue workers are in a desperate search for survivors after a head-on collision between two trains in central Greece killed dozens of people and injured scores.
At least 29 people were killed and more than 85 injured when a passenger train carrying more than 350 people collided with a freight train on Tuesday evening, shortly before midnight, in Tempi, central Greece, near the city of Larissa, the Greek Fire Service said.
“We just heard a bang… the (train) car started spinning, before ending up sideways when we managed to exit,” one male passenger told Greek public broadcaster ERT.
“It was 10 nightmarish seconds with fire, you couldn’t see much from the smoke,” said a second passenger.
Recovery efforts are underway and the death toll is expected to rise, the Greek Fire Service said.
The passenger train had been traveling from the capital Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, which is renowned for its festivals and vibrant cultural life. The collision follows a nationwide carnival at the weekend which ended with a public holiday on Monday.
Images on Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT showed plumes of thick smoke pouring out of toppled carriages and long lines of rescue vehicles next to them.
Meanwhile, rescue workers with torches searched carriages for survivors as paramedics led shell-shocked passengers from the scene.
The images also showed some surviving passengers arriving in Thessaloniki.
Greek Fire Service spokesman Vassilis Varthakogiannis said that 194 passengers had been taken safely to Thessaloniki.
At least 150 firefighters with 17 vehicles and 40 ambulances are involved in the rescue operation, he added.
The Greek railway company, Hellenic Train, said in a press release that there was “a head-on collision between two trains: a freight train and train IC 62 which had departed from Athens to Thessaloniki.”
Authorities said it is still not clear what led to the collision.
Hellenic Train, the main Greek railway company, was acquired by Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 and is now fully controlled by Trenitalia. The company operates both passenger and freight transport. The main line on which daily connections are offered is Athens-Thessaloniki.
Long-needed improvements are coming to train travel along the nation’s busy Northeast Corridor, thanks in part to the federal infrastructure funding package that President Joe Biden signed into law in the fall of 2021.
The president is making two big funding announcements this week to address bottlenecks at century-old train tunnels in Baltimore and New York City – two projects that have struggled for years to acquire enough money to get off the ground.
Construction is expected to begin as early as this year, though completion is years away.
In Maryland, the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac tunnel will be replaced with two new tubes for Amtrak and Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) trains.
Running under densely populated West Baltimore, the 1.4-mile tunnel is the oldest on the Northeast Corridor rail line and the only way for certain trains to travel south from Baltimore’s Penn Station to Washington, DC, and Virginia.
More than 10% of weekday trains are delayed, according to Amtrak. Tight curves in the tunnel currently require trains to slow down to speeds of 30 miles per hour. The tunnel also suffers from a variety of age-related issues, such as excessive water infiltration, a deteriorating structure and a sinking floor.
The improvements are expected to nearly triple capacity in the tunnel and soften the curves, allowing trains to travel as fast as 110 miles per hour. There are also plans for new signaling systems, five new roadway and railroad bridges in the area surrounding the tunnel, and a new West Baltimore MARC station that’s Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible.
The White House said Monday that the project could get up to $4.7 billion in funding from the infrastructure law. Maryland’s transportation agency has committed $450 million. In total, the new tunnel project is expected to cost around $6 billion.
The project previously received $44 million through a 2009 federal stimulus package called the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for preliminary engineering and permitting. But it had lacked a viable funding source to continue construction.
The new tunnel will be named after Maryland native and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Roughly 200,000 passengers make trips on either Amtrak or New Jersey Transit trains that run between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River each weekday.
First opened in 1910, the tunnel has several age-related problems and also suffered damage when Hurricane Sandy inundated the tubes with salt water in 2012.
Still in early stages, the most recent plans call for the construction of a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and then rehabilitation of the existing tunnel, known as the North River Tunnel.
In 2019, New York and New Jersey created the Gateway Development Commission to help facilitate the project. Last year, the commission estimated it could cost $16.1 billion and anticipated a 2038 completion date.
Funding sources are still being determined, but are expected to include federal, state, local and possibly private funding.
The White House said Tuesday that Amtrak, which owns the tunnel, will receive a $292 million grant from the infrastructure law to help complete construction of concrete casing underground on the Manhattan side of the river. The concrete casing will protect the path of the new tunnel from the Hudson River’s edge to New York’s Penn Station.
If this casing is not built now, the White House said, the foundations from the new Hudson Yards development would likely impede the path of the tunnel and make the project extremely difficult.
The $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure package was signed into law in November 2021 after receiving bipartisan support in Congress. It will provide roughly $550 billion of new federal investments over five years for everything from bridges and roads to the nation’s public transit, broadband, water and energy systems.
The funds are delivered in two ways: through formula programs that send money directly to states and through competitive grant programs that require state and local agencies to apply.
A lot of the formula programs have long been sending federal money to states on an annual basis but are now delivering much more funding for the five-year period covered by the infrastructure law.
For example, the Federal Highway Administration released nearly $60 billion to states last year through 12 formula programs to support investment in roads, bridges and tunnels; carbon emission reduction; and safety improvements. That’s an increase of $15.4 billion compared with fiscal year 2021, the last fiscal year before the infrastructure law was implemented.
Dozens of major, specific projects have been selected for funding through grant programs over the past year. Funding for the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant program (known as INFRA), which is meant for freight and highway projects of national or regional significance, increased by more than 50% last year. About $1.5 billion was released for 26 transportation projects in September.
In August, the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program, known as RAISE, released $2.2 billion for 166 specific road, bridge, transit, rail, port or intermodal transportation projects across the country. In 2021, the program could only afford to fund 90 projects.
The infrastructure law also created new funding programs, like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which released $615 million to states last year. That money can be used for installing public electric vehicle charging stations.
This story has been updated with additional information.
President Joe Biden and senior administration officials are embarking on a travel swing this week, showcasing what they see as successful measures to rebuild America’s ailing infrastructure.
In what’s been described as a preview of some of the messaging for next week’s State of the Union address, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet secretaries are all hitting the road to highlight the implementation of the landmark legislation signed into law during the president’s first two years in office. Among those accomplishments are the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
The president traveled to Baltimore on Monday to showcase the implementation of his policies, and later this week, he’ll head to New York City and Philadelphia for similar remarks.
The trips are taking place in the lead up to Biden’s State of the Union speech in Washington next week – a national platform where he’s expected to illustrate how his policies are successfully going into effect – and a prospective reelection announcement in the coming months. Biden’s approach is expected to be focused on touting the rebound of the American economy and taking aim at Republican proposals – while still underscoring his desire to work across the aisle.
In Baltimore on Monday, he discussed how the infrastructure law will fund replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, addressing the largest bottleneck for commuters on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D C, and New Jersey. The new tunnel will be named in honor of civil rights leader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Speaking from a presidential podium set to the backdrop of an American flag and an Amtrak train on the tracks, Biden recalled that he’d made a thousand trips through the tunnel and walked through it in the 1980s.
“When folks talk about how badly the Baltimore tunnel needs an upgrade, you don’t need me to tell you. I’ve been there and you’ve been there, too,” Biden said.
“You ought to get inside and see,” he remarked, discussing his tour of the tunnel decades ago. “This is a 150-year-old tunnel. I wonder how in the hell it’s still standing.”
“The structure is deteriorating. The roof is leaking. The floor is sinking. This is the United States of America, for God’s sake. We know better than that,” he continued.
When the project is done, Biden said, trains will roll through the tunnel at 110 mph instead of 30 mph, shortening regional MARC train commutes from Baltimore to Washington to 30 minutes.
At Monday’s project kickoff, the president announced an agreement between the state of Maryland and Amtrak, which includes a $450 million commitment for the tunnel replacement project, according to the White House. A project labor agreement between Amtrak and the Baltimore-DC Building and Construction Trades Council was unveiled to cover the first phase of the project. And he also announced an agreement between Amtrak and the North American Builders’ Trade Union “that ensures Amtrak’s large civil engineering construction projects controlled by Amtrak will be performed under union agreements,” according to the White House.
The program is expected to cost approximately $6 billion, of which Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding could contribute up to $4.7 billion, the White House said. Biden was joined by labor leaders, state and local officials, as well as members of Congress and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
On Tuesday, Biden travels to New York City to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding will improve the Hudson River Tunnel, which sees 200,000 passengers passing through each weekday on Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.
On Friday, Biden and Harris are scheduled to travel to Philadelphia to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding is removing lead pipes and ensuring clean water across Philadelphia and the country, the official told CNN.
According to the White House, the pair “will discuss the progress we have made and their work implementing the Biden-Harris economic agenda that continues to deliver results for the American people.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge will also travel to Chicago to discuss progress made to address homelessness as a result of provisions within the American Rescue Plan, according to the official.
While Biden has often embarked on domestic trips to highlight his policies in action, these stops have served as a significant messaging platform since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives this year.
He asked the crowd, “(Why) in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we’ve made for the chaos they’re suggesting?”
“MAGA Republicans,” he added, “are literally choosing to inflict this pain on the American people.”
Despite that heavy emphasis on his warnings about GOP plans, Biden this week is expected to hone in on his ability to work across the aisle to push legislation into law. Specifically, in a preview of the travel, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre underscored Biden’s “success (in) bringing Republicans and independents and Democrats together to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
In Baltimore on Monday, the president brought up his recent trip to Kentucky, where he stood alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to herald the implementation of the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans supported.
The policy messaging trips also carry more weight as the prospect of a presidential reelection campaign looms large over the White House.
Biden has been working intensively on his State of the Union Speech speech – including over the weekend – which his team views as a launching pad for the reelection bid. His speeches around the East Coast week will offer a preview of his message as he touts new infrastructure projects.
Behind the scenes, aides are building up a campaign infrastructure and the West Wing is in the process of restructuring for a politically intense two years.
Peppered in between stops to visit projects funded though the proposals which were the bedrock of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden will participate in events that are part of an intense fundraising push ahead of the campaign announcement.
The travel comes as Biden also contends with a number of simmering issues in Washington – House Republican probes, investigations into classified documents found at his residence and former office and the debt ceiling standoff. The US Treasury is already taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills after the US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress.
One of the first things you can hear is the sound of someone moaning.
The camera is shaky, but in the video, you can see blood on the ground and on the seats. The smoke begins to clear and then, the confusion sets in.
“I don’t know – someone’s bleeding,” a man can be heard saying. Later he asks aloud, “was it gunshots?”
A few moments after, amid the screeching of the subway car, glimpses of a tangle of injured people are seen close to the floor, with more blood pooling around some of them. A man continues to moan, and another advises him to “stay low.”
The graphic video, taken by one of the 29 people injured after Frank James opened fire on a crowded New York City subway train during morning rush hour on April 12, shows the chaos, confusion and gore of the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
The witness’ video was one of several pieces of evidence unsealed Thursday in James’ case. CNN has reached out to attorneys representing James for comment.
James, who initially pleaded not guilty last May, admitted on Tuesday to 10 counts of committing a terrorist attack and other violence against a mass transportation system and vehicle carrying passengers and employees. He also pleaded guilty to one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.
James, 63, is accused of setting off smoke grenades and firing a handgun at least 33 times on a crowded train traveling toward the 36th Street station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
He is due to be sentenced at a later date, but his sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.
By the time the 13-minute video begins, the shooting has stopped, but the train has yet to reach the next station, so everyone on the train car remains trapped inside, prosecutors said in a new court filing Thursday.
James fled the scene and was not apprehended by authorities until the next day, but it’s unclear at what point he left the train car.
A passenger can be heard on the video asking someone to help him. The man who shot the video says he will help, and can be heard asking the passenger, “are you OK?”
“No, f**k, my leg hurts a lot,” the passenger responds.
As soon as the train pulls into the next station, people on the video can be seen rushing out one of the subway car’s doors. While some rush into another train on the opposite side of the platform, others collapse to the ground, with more blood pooling around them.
“Oh f**k, that’s a lot of blood! Sh*t,” the injured passenger can be heard saying. Other shouting can be heard around them, before another man, whom prosecutors describe as “subway worker,” yells out, “Did anybody see what happened?”
The man who took the video, whom prosecutors describe as “Victim-1” responds “yes.” He then proceeds to say there was an “explosion bomb,” “black smoke” and a “popping sound” that came from the end of the train next to a construction worker “with orange clothes on.”
About one minute later, as MTA workers are trying to gather more information about what happened, the video captures Victim-1 yell out again: “Orange! Orange! He was wearing orange!” the court filing from prosecutors states.
Later on, the video moves to show the inside of the now-empty subway car, with a large amount of blood on the car’s floor. An MTA worker can be heard making an announcement asking others to leave the station, while another passenger still cries out in pain on the station’s floor.
The video ends with glimpses of first responders arriving on the platform. The person who took the video was eventually treated for smoke inhalation at an area hospital and released, according to an NYPD document also unsealed Thursday.
A 30-hour manhunt for the perpetrator ensued after the subway shooting, only to conclude when James turned himself into authorities.
After he was arrested, James was interviewed at least twice on April 13. Videos of those interviews were also unsealed Thursday, with faces of the investigators blurred.
In the first video, when investigators ask him if there are any more weapons out there or if he had any other plans to hurt anyone, Frank appears to deny any involvement in the shooting and says he was just another passenger on the train.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about at all. See, I was on the train. I was on the train,” James said. “I was on the train and when whatever happened, happened — anybody else … all I had was my equipment that was in my bag and in my shopping cart. And the only thing in my coat was just more clothes to cover my face because of the smoke was blinding me and making me nauseous and all of that. That’s all I’m saying.”
James later admitted to having guns, but said they were “disposed of.”
“That has nothing to do with me. You know, so I don’t, you know, I really don’t want to answer these questions without having an attorney involved in this situation,” James said. “Every firearm that – every firearm that I have owned has been disposed of. And that’s all I can tell you.”
The interview lasted less than four minutes. A few minutes later, other investigators are seen on video entering the room where James is being held. During this interview, James begins talking about his YouTube page and how he uses it to “express himself.”
At one point, he also says, “violence is all right any time, violence is all right all the time.”
CNN has previously reported James was linked to a series of videos posted to a YouTube channel that have since been removed.
CNN was able to analyze the videos before they were taken down. They include rambling speeches filled with racist and misogynistic language, as well as references to violence.
Investigators also searched James’ storage unit and the apartment in which he was staying before the attack. Law enforcement records from those searches, also unsealed Thursday, state items such as a stun gun, ammunition, a train schedule, empty gun magazines, handwritten notes and “smoke bombs” were found.
Snow, rain, ice, wind and frigid temperatures are disrupting air travel plans across the United States as well as bus and Amtrak passenger train service.
Airlines canceled more than 2,390 US flights by 8:30 ET p.m. Thursday and proactively canceled more than 2,200 flights for Friday, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. Even for Saturday, more than 125 flights were already canceled.
Delays were even more extensive on Thursday: More than 9,000 as of 8:30 p.m. ET.
The impacts are being felt hardest in Chicago and Denver, where around a quarter of arrivals and departures – hundreds of flights at each airport – were canceled on Thursday, FlightAware data show.
At one point Thursday at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, delays averaging 159 minutes – almost three hours – were being caused by snow and ice, according to a notice from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Temperatures at the O’Hare dropped to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius) around 6:45 p.m. local time. Light snow and fog/mist were reported by the National Weather Service.
The FAA said departing aircraft at Dallas Love, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Minneapolis airports require a spraying of de-icing fluid for safe travel.
In the busy New York City metro area, the FAA warned that Newark flights should expect delays because of visibility issues.
The region’s three large airports are all warning travelers that the incoming winter weather front may disrupt their travels.
“Flight activity at #LaGuardiaAirport may be disrupted by heavy rain and strong winds later today and Friday. Travelers, please confirm flight status with your airline before heading to the airport,” LaGuardia Airport posted on Twitter. John F. Kennedy and Newark Airport also posted similar notices.
For those whose flights are still scheduled to fly, the Transportation Security Administration is recommending that passengers arrive at the airport earlier than usual.
John Busch, Reagan National Airport’s TSA federal security director, told reporters that all airports “expect to be busier this holiday season than we’ve been in several years coming out of the pandemic. We’ve already seen some of our busiest days, yesterday and today and we expect maybe Friday 30th ahead of the New Year’s holiday can be also a very busy day.”
But Busch added that TSA is “very well prepared to handle additional volume and throughput for our security checkpoints.”
Maria Ihekwaba, who was traveling from Chicago to Clear Lake, Iowa, with her granddaughter on Thursday morning, told CNN she was trying to depart as soon as possible.
“Especially when you’re traveling from Chicago, you never know what could happen in Chicago because it’s the Windy City,” Ihekwaba said.
Traveler Kari Lucas, from San Diego, told CNN she was visiting her sister and brother-in-law, but cut the trip short as she didn’t want to get caught in the impending weather.
“I was worried because San Diego, we don’t get these snowstorms,” she said. “So I don’t like it to be trapped in the airport for long periods of time.”
“It seemed like the best choice to make right now,” she said.
It’s not just flights that are being affected by the bomb cyclone.
Greyhound issued a service alert on Thursday warning customers that those traveling in the Midwest over the next two days may have their trips delayed or canceled altogether.
Greyhound, the largest provider of intercity bus service, listed more than a dozen cities from West Virginia to Minnesota that are among those impacted. They include:
• Charleston, West Virginia • Chicago • Cleveland • Dallas • Danville, Illinois • Davenport, Iowa • Denver • Detroit • Indianapolis • Kansas City • Minneapolis • St. Louis • Wichita, Kansas
Greyhound said riders can call 1-833-233-8507 to reschedule.
Amtrak has also been forced to delay or cancel passenger service for some lines in the Midwest and Northeast.
In its notice, Amtrak said that “customers with reservations on trains that are being modified will typically be accommodated on trains with similar departure times or another day.
“Amtrak will waive additional charges for customers looking to change their reservation during the modified schedule by calling our reservation center at 1-800-USA-RAIL.”
FedEx says it is watching the winter weather and has “contingency plans in place to help keep our team members safe and lessen any impact” on Christmas deliveries.
“In anticipation of severe weather, we have been repositioning assets so we can provide service where and when it is safe to do so,” FedEx told CNN in a statement.
