Wisconsin high-speed rail plan on track
Written by jrood
Wisconsin transportation planners are on a lightning-fast track, feverishly preparing to build the 85-mile, high-speed rail corridor from Milwaukee to Madison when $817.7 million in federal stimulus funding is secured, the Milwaukee Business Journal reports.
The state Department of
Transportation’s railroad bureau is so confident that its high-speed rail
application, submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration last summer, will
be approved in the first quarter of 2010 that meetings with engineers,
contractors and disadvantaged businesses were held in early January and
proposals outlining companies’ interest in the project were due to be sent to
DOT by Jan. 13.
"We are aggressively
planning the work so the corridor can be operating by Jan. 1, 2013," said John
Oimoen, the DOT’s project manager for the Milwaukee-Madison, high-speed rail
line.
In early 2009, the federal
government allocated $8 billion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act to build 11 high-speed rail lines in the United States. The
Milwaukee-Madison line is one of several in the Midwest, augmenting the
existing Amtrak service from the Chicago rail hub.
Oimoen said the Federal
Railroad Administration has promised to deliver a "letter of intent" for
funding the rail initiative to DOT by March 21, enabling the state to begin the
contract negotiations with potential engineers, architects and builders. At a
DOT high-speed rail meeting Jan. 5 in Pewaukee, more than 200 companies crowded
into a conference room at Waukesha County Technical College to learn about the
pending project.
"It sounds like Wisconsin
is taking the right steps," said Rob Kulat, a spokesman for the Federal
Railroad Administration.
Kulat said the factors that
will determine who gets the federal funding hinge on detailed assessments
related to the rail corridor’s environmental impact, advanced planning for
construction and the project’s impact on local employment. Even though the
Federal Railroad Administration isn’t tipping its hand on who will and won’t be
funded, Wisconsin is considered a leader in the development of a high-speed
rail corridor, Oimoen said.
Wisconsin completed its
environmental studies on the corridor’s impact in 2004, Oimoen said. The state
also is quickly gearing up its planning activities to allow the project to
start soon after receiving federal approval.
Infrastructure improvements
on the Milwaukee-to-Watertown corridor are estimated to cost $286.1 million.
The Watertown-to-Madison portion will require $330.6 million of improvements.
The DOT’s application also identifies $24.8 million for the construction of
four train stations and parking structures.
In addition, the
application calls for spending $91.4 million for new train sets that can travel
on the high-speed system. There also is $47.6 million allocated for a train
inspection and service facility, and $37.2 million committed to environmental
work and DOT’s management of the project.
There are several large
engineering and construction firms with rail development experience that DOT
expects to compete for the high-speed rail contracts. They include HNTB Corp.,
Kansas City, Mo.; HDR Inc., Omaha, Neb.; PDI Rail Solutions, San Antonio; and
Walsh Construction Co., Chicago. All of the firms were present at the Jan. 13
workshop where they met with scores of engineering and architectural firms and
small companies that qualify as disadvantaged businesses. The Milwaukee-Madison
high-speed rail requires that 20 percent of the work be handled by
disadvantaged businesses, Oimoen said.
The Madison office of Mead
& Hunt Inc. will submit bids to handle environmental assessments of four
train stations that will be constructed as part of the project. Mead & Hunt
also is in line to compete for some of the public outreach contracts that will
be let for the project, said Julie Hoppe, a spokeswoman for the company. American
Design Inc., a Milwaukee minority-owned architectural firm, will submit bids
for the design of the train stations and the layouts of the parking structures
and surface lots, said John Williams, president of the firm.
Williams said his company
has worked with HNTB and other large firms on rail projects, including the
design of train stations for the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail network
that’s also under development.
