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Saturday, March 9,2024
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Joint Rail Authority on track for $10M in upgrades Redevelopment of the former Celotex property remains high priority for local leaders/A2
Beginnings of Gilson Snow emerged from middle school classroom/A2 Photo provided
A North Shore Railroad freight train traverses a new culvert placed under the tracks for the first time on Jan. 26 after an 8-day rail closure to complete the construction project in Point Township, Northumberland County. The Joint Rail Authority’s capital program includes a bridge bundle project that will replace or rehabilitate seven bridges across across the rail network. JRA is made up of nine counties and each county designates two board members to the JRA board of 18. “We are a large regional organiza tion that touches a lot of municipalities physically, but also through our efforts in economic development,” he said.
By Rick Dandes rdandes@dailyitem.com
Fabtex makes treatments for firms/A3
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Bucknell gives students ‘Access and Success’/A5
LEWISBURG — In 2024, said Steve Beattie, executive director, of Joint Rail Authority (JRA is an in dependent part of SEDA-Council of Government), “our focus is on capital improvement, or capital investment, where we will be approaching over $10 million of improvements across our rail network.” JRA’s role is freight rail, the pres ervation of freight rail, and promoting economic development. JRA’s rail network is in the ninecounty area. “So, a lot of our band width will be taken up purely through managing those projects,” he ex plained. Locally, JRA has a contractor and will be under construction in June on the Shamokin Valley line for grade crossing from Sunbury to Shamokin. Fifteen grade crossings will be im proved. This will create the need for detour plans and some inconvenience to the public, as the crossings are up graded, Beattie said. The cost of the project is federal money passed through to the Pennsyl vania Department of Transportation (Penn DOT). It is called Section 130 Corridor Safety Money. JRA is in two regional PennDOT districts. “So, a lot of this year will be imple mentations,” Beattie said. “Last year we spent a lot of time on planning, engineering, permitting, and getting that all set up for a lot of construction, 2024.
Photo provided
A 108-inch diameter reinforced concrete culvert is installed on the North Shore Railroad line in Point Township, Northumber land County as part of the Joint Rail Authority’s capital improve ment program. Additionally, JRA will be doing, “with our partners, the Northshore Railroad a rail replacement project at the inter change with Norfolk Southern in Nor thumberland Borough to replace rail, because the rail in that area is approach ing a hundred years old,” Beattie said. That's about a $1 million rail replace ment project. “We have projects else where on the system in Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Valley,” he said. Celebrating 40th year JRA celebrated 40 years of incorpora tion in 2023. This summer, Northshore Railroad will celebrate its 40th year as operator on JRA lines.
The JRA came out of SEDA-COG 40 years ago and has a separate budget, separate board, and separate staff. “We are a very successful example of a public-private partnership, where the public owns the rail lines. And in this case, the private entity is the operator., and the affiliate railroads that run our lines,” Beattie said. JRA is responsible for the manage ment of the property, and the real estate, and then the upkeep, rebuilding, reno vation, and rehabilitation of the capital assets, which are the crossings, bridges, and rail yards. The operator focuses on the everyday maintenance of the lines and serving the customer.
Looking back at 2023 JRA started their initiative of our large capital improvement program. All of the work related to engineering, permitting, and getting the funding in place. “We own a lot of bridges,” Beattie said, “and so there is a lot of permit ting related to bridges because some of our bridges are underwater and it affects the banks.” Another thing JRA did in 2023, JRA also negotiate an agreement with the Bellefonte Historic Railroad Soci ety and restart passenger excursions out in the Bellefonte-Centre County area.”That was a big deal because those excursions had stopped during COVID-19 and had not restarted. This was something the public was looking forward to. And we made that process out there and independent excursion entity. They run separately from the excursion run over here. “We’re a railroad,” he said. “We are re-investing constantly. T think it is important to note we are a public railroad, a freight railroad. But no local taxpayer money is used to fund the railroad. Our funding is directly from the freight revenue earned on the freight, besides leasing and licensing parts of our property along the network.”
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