International Nature of the Tren Urbano Project in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Author(s):  
J. William Vigrass ◽  
Sergio L. González

An overview of the Tren Urbano project in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is presented. Phase 1 will be a 17-km rail rapid transit line from Bayamon to Sagrado Corazon in metropolitan San Juan. The line is standard gauge, third-rail-powered, 750-Vdc, rail rapid transit, fully grade-separated. An initial fleet of 64 cars was ordered, and an option for 10 more has been exercised. The project has been bid as a design-build-operate-maintain effort, with Siemens Transportation Systems, Inc., as the prime contractor. Work has been divided into six segments and bid by local contractors. Through the Systems Turnkey and Test Track contract, Siemens is responsible for all systems elements, including cars, power supply, signals, train control and communications, the yard and shop, and about 2 km of main line with two passenger stations. Systems elements are described, with emphasis on their origin in various countries in addition to the United States. The need for Buy America compliance is mentioned. Some car-borne equipment was designed and initial units were built overseas, with most production being done in U.S. plants owned or contracted by the suppliers. By using international sources, Siemens was able to be the lowest bidder and yet provide a quality system to meet the contract requirements.

2015 ◽  
Vol 2537 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Durning ◽  
Craig Townsend

A direct ridership model for Canadian rail rapid transit systems is presented. The goal of the study was to produce a ridership model to evaluate the specific context of Canadian rapid transit: no comprehensive model existed. Data were collected for Canada's five largest cities, including 342 stations with an average weekday ridership of more than 3 million passengers. Using bootstrapped ordinary least squares regression with station boardings as the dependent variable and 44 socio economic, built environment, and system attributes as potential explanatory variables, which were chosen after a review of the direct ridership model literature, the study yielded one model with an adjusted R2value of .8033. The results are similar to those of models constructed in the United States with respect to densities, land uses, and station amenities, and socioeconomic variables do not appear to be significant. The absence of socioeconomic variables in the final model indicates that planners and policy makers have significant scope to exert influence over transit use through land use planning, design, and service features.


Author(s):  
Yazmín M Crespo Claudio ◽  
◽  
Omayra Rivera Crespo

A design-build workshop organized by Taller CreandoS in Encargos a collective founded by four female architecture professors; Yazmín M. Crespo, AndreaBauzá, Irvis González y Omayra Rivera, at La Perla, a community outside the northern historic city-wall of old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Together the professors share interests to revitalize deteriorated and abandon urban spaces with ephemeral interventions and participative workshops in an effort to redefine the conventional way of understanding the professional practice of architecture. The workshop invited students from the three architecture and design schools in Puerto Rico; Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, University of Puerto Rico School of Architecture, Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico and the school of Visual Arts in Old San Juan to work together with international architecture collectives Todo porla Praxis from Madrid, Spain; Arquitectura Expandida from Bogotá, Colombia; and FG Studio from New YorkCity in three design-build projects together with the community. The workshop included lectures by the three international architects’ collectives, a design charrette, community presentations, final review, a round table and construction of the interventions from August 31to September 7, 2013.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo J. Avilés Mendoza ◽  
Kristen P. Finne ◽  
Francisco Torre Leon ◽  
Lisandro Montalvo Burke ◽  
Jessica Cabrera-Marquez ◽  
...  

AbstractTwo category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, arrived in the Caribbean in September 2017 in rapid succession. On September 6, Irma devastated the islands of St. Thomas and St. John, in the Virgin Islands of the United States (USVI). Most medical infrastructure was damaged, including hemodialysis facilities, paralyzing dialysis operations. After Irma’s landfall, Puerto Rico served as a safehaven for thousands of displaced and repatriated persons from the impacted islands. These included a cohort of 129 hemodialysis patients evacuated from St. Thomas, USVI to San Juan, Puerto Rico from September 9−11, 2017. The hemodialysis patients arrived first at hotels in San Juan and were then transferred to a Special Needs Shelter, run by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and located in the Puerto Rico Convention Center. With the imminent arrival of Hurricane Maria, most patients were evacuated on September 19 to a special needs shelter on the campus of the Florida International University, in Miami, Florida. While in San Juan, hemodialysis treatments were provided by local nephrologists working with local hemodialysis centers. Here, we describe the challenges and the emergency management actions taken to ensure continuity of care, including providing dialysis, general medical care, shelter, food and transportation for USVI dialysis patients during their stay in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We describe here the experiences of federal and host state/territorial officials in the special needs shelter, in the context of the state/territorial and federal response to disasters, in order to provide ideas about challenges, solutions, and approaches to coordinating care for dialysis patients evacuated from a disaster.


Author(s):  
Endika Basáñez Barrio

Resumen: A lo largo de la siguiente entrevista, el profesor, historiador, crítico e investigador la de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, el catedrático en literatura puertorriqueña don Fernando Feliú Matilla, nos permite establecer una visión histórica de la génesis artística llevada a cabo en la Isla a través de los diferentes contextos socio-políticos que han tenido lugar en la misma desde la aparición de una literatura puertorriqueña propia y distintiva hasta la anexión de Puerto Rico a los Estados Unidos de América como Estado Libre Asociado en 1952 y su impronta en la génesis isleña. Si bien la entrevista tiene como objeto principal la literatura boricua, también se debaten en la misma el falocentrismo cultural presente en la cultura puertorriqueña, las relaciones políticas entre San Juan y Washington D.C., la influencia de los textos diaspóricos en la producción isleña o la situación del panorama artístico actual en Puerto Rico.Palabras clave: Literatura hispanoamericana; Literatura puertorriqueña; Estados Unidos; emigración; política. Abstract: Throughtout the following interview, professor Fernando Feliú Matilla, who holds a chair in Puerto Rican Studies and Literature, offers his personal point of view after years of research about Puerto Rican literature written in the 20th century. The interview is developed from a historical perspective, which means that it starts right from the moment Puerto Rico was still a Spanish colony in the Americas, until the present day, being Puerto Rico a Free Associated State of the United States of America (also known as American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico). Besides the literature, professor Feliú Matilla also gives his opinion about the absence of female writers in Puerto Rican literature, the relationships between San Juan and Washington D.C., the cultural movements that Puerto Rican literature written nowadays is influenced by, and many other different topics such as Caribbean literature written in the United States and its connection with Puerto Rican art.Keywords: Hispanic Literature; Puerto Rican Literature; USA; immigration; politics. 


Author(s):  
E. Douglas Bomberger

On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to enter the European war, and Congress voted to do so on Friday, 6 April. On the 15th of that month, Victor released the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s record of “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step”; it caused an immediate nationwide sensation. James Reese Europe travelled to Puerto Rico in search of woodwind players for the Fifteenth New York Regiment Band, and the Creole Band ended its vaudeville career when it missed the train to Portland, Maine. German musicians in the United States came under increased scrutiny in the weeks after the declaration of war, as the country prepared to adopt new laws and regulations for wartime.


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