Airos complete testing, PATH service expanded & Montreal REM expansion | This Week In Transit

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:03]Hello. Welcome to D Transit and welcome back to another episode of this week in transit. Before we begin, please be sure to like and subscribe to the channel and comment below if there's anything I missed in this video. Without further ado, here's this week in transit. We start our day with a few pieces of news about the US's national rail operator, Amtrak. The first of their new Airo train sets, which had been sent from Sacramento, California to the Northeast Corridor to undergo testing, has officially been accepted by Amtrak.

[00:00:34]After manufacturing was complete, the train set was sent to the Northeast to undergo rigorous testing. In this time, the train set technically hadn't been accepted by Amtrak. But on May 14th, following a successful testing period, Amtrak was officially handed the keys and accepted the first Airo train set at their Bear maintenance facility in Delaware. This marks Amtrak's first accepted Airo train set and sets a much more concrete timeline for its acceptance into passenger service.

[00:01:04]Following acceptance, Amtrak sent it out to the Pacific Northwest for the first time. There, it will undergo testing, simulation of its revenue runs on the Cascades service, and complete crew training duties before being brought into passenger service by the middle of this summer.

[00:01:20]One thing to notice in particular was the lack of noise surrounding the testing period. Contrary to much longer and more heavily watched testing of the next generation Acela, the Airos completed testing fairly quickly, a hopeful indicator of a smooth and painless road ahead for Amtrak's newest fleet additions. Out on New York's Long Island, the LIRR strike brought on by five unions who represent roughly half of the Long Island Railroad's workforce was brought to an end on Tuesday afternoon. After an agreement was made on Monday evening with Governor Kathy Hochul in attendance. The strike shut down America's busiest commuter railroad for more than 3 days and caused a harrowing Monday morning and evening commute for most people. I already covered this strike a few times. So, for more on the LIRR strike, see the description where I'll link last week's this week in transit episode where I covered the strike as well as a post on my blog exclusively devoted to a breakdown of how the strike happened. In the city, the Mumdani administration isn't slowing down on their quest to redo roadways across the city.

[00:02:26]In Queens, the DOT is planning to install a center running bus lane along Broadway between 69th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. The bus lane, which would head in the east direction only, will help speed up riders on the Q70 Select Bus Service, which connects riders to the Long Island Rail Road, five different subway lines, and LaGuardia Airport.

[00:02:46]To the east in Manhattan, the DOT is also upgrading eight blocks of bus lanes on Lexington Avenue between 60th Street and 52nd Street. Presently, Lexington Avenue has curbside bus lanes where buses run right along the curb, eliminating street parking, which increases the likelihood of illegal parking in the bus lane. As a resolution, the city is turning to offset bus bus lanes, which leaves a lane of space between the curb and the bus lane, reducing the likelihood of illegal parking and speeding up buses.

[00:03:18]This follows a similar redesign performed on Lexington Avenue from 96th to 60th Streets, which increased bus speeds by 26% and lowered pedestrian injuries by 35%.

[00:03:31]The new design will help speed up buses used by over 70,000 riders a day, which currently average 5 mph during the day due to illegally parked vehicles. Both projects are hoped to be complete by the end of the year. Across the river in New Jersey, celebrations are in order across Hudson County. For the first time since 2001, PATH is revolutionizing late night and weekend service. For the past 25 years, PATH operated four lines during the weekday daytime hours: Newark to World Trade Center, Hoboken to World Trade Center, Journal Square to 33rd Street, and Journal Square to Hoboken.

[00:04:09]During late nights and weekends, to reduce operations while maintaining an overnight presence, only two lines would operate: Newark to World Trade Center and Journal Square to 33rd Street via Hoboken, where it would enter Hoboken, then reverse out to continue to Manhattan or Journal Square.

[00:04:26]While this setup worked for the area for a short time, the quick uprising of the New Jersey Hudson waterfront and their subsequent dependence on PATH as a primary form of transport meant the area was devoid of consistent connectivity on the weekends, especially for those who lived in Jersey City and wanted to get to Midtown Manhattan quickly, who had to sit through an agonizingly long wait at Hoboken. The route had even been known as around the world by PATH employees.

[00:04:54]Starting last weekend, the Port Authority reintroduced service on all four lines on weekends from 10:00 a.m.

[00:05:00]to 9:00 p.m., naming the campaign every line, every day. The lines to 33rd Street from Journal Square and Hoboken will run every 10 minutes during the day, while Hoboken to World Trade Center will run every 20 minutes. During late nights, service will run every 20 minutes, eliminating the dreaded 40-minute wait between trains that became commonplace in the PATH system, but late nights will still utilize the two-route style, not the four-route. The service changes are a direct result of the PATH Forward program, which tackled some of PATH's biggest infrastructure issues in a $430 million project, including trackage, signaling, and train control upgrades for the over century-old railroad. Let's go out west to Pittsburgh, where the local transit agency is raking in the success of a recent event. The 2026 NFL draft took place in Pittsburgh where teams converge to select newly eligible players for professional teams over a 3-day period. This year between April 23rd and April 25th. The event drew thousands of people to the city and Pittsburgh Regional Transit or PRT successfully handled the crowds. Four of their special football flyer routes carried nearly 60,000 riders offering connections between park and ride locations and the center of the NFL draft at Acrisure Stadium for free.

[00:06:21]Overall, more than 180,000 people used free transit with an additional 300,000 rides coming on their paid transit raising $1.2 million from a combination of fair revenue and advertising sales. For our final piece of news, we're going international to Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec. You might remember in the last year that they created a substantial expansion to the REM system, which stands for Metropolitan Express Network in French. In November, the city opened the Deux-Montagnes portion of the line linking the eastern and western sides of Montreal via a through-running system in downtown Montreal. Last week, the city opened yet another branch in the Anse-à-l'Orme branch, which creates four new stations south of the Deux-Montagnes branch running out to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.

[00:07:12]The expansion creates over 100 new bike racks and almost 4,000 new direct parking spots for riders to take advantage of. This marks the second of three expected western branches with the third to come in 2027 creating a direct link to Montreal's Trudeau International Airport. The entire system is fully automated and runs at frequencies of 2.5 minutes on the eastern trunk during rush hour and 5 minutes at other times. The new Anse-à-l'Orme branch will see service every 10 minutes during rush hour and every 15 minutes at all other times. And with that, we come to an end in this Week in Transit. If you enjoyed and want to see more content on D Transit, please be sure to like and subscribe to the channel. And comment below if there's anything I missed.

[00:07:58]Thanks for watching this D Transit video and have a great day.