(The following article by Cathy Woodruff was posted on the Albany Times-Union website on August 23.)
RENSSELAER, N.Y. — More than a dozen high-powered engineering firms, including contributors to the construction Chunnel linking England and France and the New York City subway system, want to help get the Empire State’s stalled high-speed rail plans back on track.
“They’re heavy hitters. They’re all big in the industry,” John Egan, director of a state task force on high-speed rail, said of the standing-room-only crowd of consultants who turned out for an informational meeting at the Rensselaer Rail Station last week.
Representatives of companies with experience with transportation projects around the globe met for a briefing on what will be expected of bidders on a $1.2 million study charting New York’s passenger rail future.
The money on the table, a tight timeline, and the range of expertise needed to address the issues to be studied combined to draw the interest of so many large firms with international reputations.
Once a proposal is selected, the firm or firms picked will have just over three months to do a soup-to-nuts analysis of what should be done to improve rail service in New York.
“It’s the kind of project, because of the short-term duration, that’s going to require a firm with a wide range of skills that can be brought to bear quickly,” said Michael Cuddy, manager of the New York office for Parsons Brinkerhoff Quade & Douglas, a company with more than 9,000 employees globally. “It can be difficult for a firm that has a limited number of people to do 20 things at once.”
Recent projects in which Parsons Brinkerhoff has played a part include an ongoing 20,000-mile Railtrack modernization and construction program throughout England and Scotland; the metro rail network in Delhi, India; and Boston’s Big Dig. Company founder William Barclay Parsons designed the first line in the New York City subway system.
“It’s going to need quite a wide range of skills, and, therefore, I think teaming is pretty likely,” said Richard Prust, an associate principal with Arup consulting engineers in New York City. Arup has worked on rail and transit projects in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Bangkok, and the company’s European projects have included a rail link to the Chunnel beneath the English Channel.
Since the study will require consideration of links to downstate rail transit systems, Prust and others noted that experience inside New York could be valuable.
For example, Prust has been Arup’s design manager during the ongoing planning for the $17 billion proposed Second Avenue Subway, and his firm is the lead consultant on the $750 million Fulton Street Transit Center in Manhattan. It is involved in engineering and environmental impact studies on the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement.
The push to get a high-speed rail plan rolling again comes after a project backed by Gov. George Pataki to recondition a fleet of 1970s-era turbo trains and slice the travel time between Albany and New York City by 20 minutes collapsed last year.
The extensive rail improvements needed to support the higher speeds were never made, Amtrak mothballed three of the Turboliners, and the state sued Amtrak for failing to carry through on the agreement announced by Pataki in 1998.
When Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno announced the state Senate’s high-speed rail initiative in March, he spoke of super-fast European-style “bullet trains” that would zoom through New York at up to 200 mph. Since then, Bruno and Egan have said the effort also should produce shorter-term results, as well, to speed up rail service between Albany and New York City.
“Visionary things are things we still have to keep on the drawing boards,” Egan told the consultants last week. However, he added, “I’d hate to see people get hung up on high speed only because, to me, it’s how long does it take to get from A to B. … I like to talk about high efficiency.”
Later, in an interview, Egan said the state’s rail strategy should include a series of benchmarks with a long-range vision.
“You lead up to the bullet trains,” he said. “If you wait for the bullet trains, you’re going to wait more than five years. You need an early success.”
While the feasibility study is estimated to cost $1.2 million, the total allocated for the task force’s initial work is $5 million. It is not yet clear how the remaining funding will be used.
The study puts New York in a small club of states that have examined, have undertaken or are considering high-speed rail projects that ultimately could cost billions.
The Senate task force is making all the previous studies available to the experts contemplating bids on this study, and Egan said some of the work could prove quite useful for the next study.
Proposals are due in time for an Aug. 31 bid opening, and a decision is to be made on Sept. 16. By Dec. 28, the task force staff intends to deliver the study to Bruno.