Feds forbid bullet train bids for track, systems. California moves ahead anyway. Now what?
Over the objections of federal regulators, the agency tasked with building California’s ambitious bullet-train project is moving forward to seek bids from companies to lay steel tracks and install required operating systems for a 119-mile stretch of the line through the central San Joaquin Valley.
California High-Speed Rail Authority board members voted unanimously Tuesday to issue a request for bids from a trio of pre-qualified teams of companies to install two sets of tracks, as well as systems for electrical power, signals and communications on the route that is now under construction from north of Madera to northwest of Bakersfield.
Engineers and consultants for the state rail authority estimate that the work will cost about $1.6 billion. That’s on top of three contracts that add up to more than $4.8 billion for construction of overpasses, bridges, trenches and viaducts for the route through Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties.
Another $290 million was spent for Caltrans to relocate a two-mile stretch of Highway 99 about 100 feet to the west between Clinton and Ashlan avenues in west-central Fresno to make room for the high-speed rail route.
Former Fresno County Supervisor Henry R. Perea, who was appointed to the rail authority’s board earlier this year by state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, took to Twitter and Facebook to hail Tuesday’s vote as progress for the embattled rail project.
Three teams of U.S. and international companies were deemed qualified to bid on the project after a screening process earlier this year:
- Bombardier-Salcef-Weitz: Includes Bombardier Transportation (Holdings) USA Inc., a division of Canadian multinational Bombardier Inc.; Italy’s Salcef SpA; and Iowa-based Weitz Company LLC.
- California High-Speed Rail Constructors: Includes Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc., the Georgia-based American division of England’s Balfour Beatty Plc; Fluor Enterprises Inc. of Texas; and Los Angeles-based AECOM and two French companies, Egis Rail and Systra.
- Hitchi Acciona Copasa Rail Partners: Acciona Construction USA, an American subsidiary of Spain’s Acciona Construccion SA; Hitachi Rail STS USA Inc., the American branch of Italy’s Hitachi Rail STS; and Spanish construction company SA de Obras y Servicios COPASA. Other participating companies are Colas Rail of France, Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA, Hatch Associates Consultants from Pennsylvania, and Spanish civil engineering firm Typsa.
Dueling letters
On Monday, a day before the rail authority’s meeting in Sacramento, the Federal Railroad Administration sent the state a letter declaring its disapproval for releasing of the bid request. The FRA is the federal agency that administers and oversees about $2.6 billion in federal stimulus grants that were awarded to California for the rail project.
FRA project manager Juliana Shu Barnes said in her letter that the funding agreements between the state and federal agencies requires the state to gain the FRA’s approval of plans for financing, building and operating the line before the state can seek bids, and wrote that the state rail agency “has failed to do so.”
“It is premature for CHSRA to undertake another major design-build contract,” Barnes added. “The current (construction contracts) continue to face significant and continuing delays building the necessary civil infrastructure.”
In a response Tuesday, rail authority CEO Brian Kelly blamed the FRA for dragging its feet in reviewing materials that he said the state has already provided. The FRA’s disapproval, he wrote to Barnes, “is based on misunderstandings and your agency’s own inaction, which does not provide a good faith basis for interfering in this authority’s efforts to meet the timelines in our federal grant agreements.”
“As you know, or should know, the installation of track on the 119-mile segment is a deliverable under our federal funding agreements with your agency,” Kelly added, “and pursuant to those agreements must be completed by December 31, 2022. We did not have the luxury of inaction on this issue.”
“The timing of your letter is the latest example of the FRA’s evolving position from one of cooperation and partnership to disengagement that appears calculated to impede the project’s progress,” Kelly added.
It’s not clear what consequences could come from the state’s acting in apparent defiance of the federal disapproval. “FRA did not approve CHSRA’s issuance of the Request for Proposals (RFP), due to multiple technical issues,” an FRA spokesperson said in a written statement Thursday. “We will review CHSRA’s response.”
In an interview with The Fresno Bee, Kelly said his letter was meant to express “deep frustration” with the federal agency “not working with us for the last six months on this, and then dropping a letter saying don’t go forward.”
“It’s not constructive, and it’s not the functional relationship that we’re looking for,” he added. “For us to be successful, this project needs an active, cooperative and functional federal partner to make sure we meet our deadlines.”
A ‘challenging’ deadline
Those deadlines, coming up three years from now in December 2022, call for three different “deliverables” from the state for the 119-mile route from Madera to Shafter: completion of the “civil infrastructure,” or the bridges, overpasses and other structures that are needed before steel rails can be installed; installation of the steel track on top of that infrastructure; and environmental certification of all of the segments of the rail route from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
“The December 2022 deadline is challenging,” Kelly acknowledged. “We understand that our time schedule is compressed, but we have an undaunted commitment to meet it.”
Electrification of the tracks with overhead power lines and other systems are not required by that deadline, but “but we are moving forward in a way where the systems will be identified and the line ready to be electrified high-speed rail,” Kelly said. “We’re very focused on what needs to be done first, but we’re also focused on building a broader project and trying to get electrified high-speed rail running in California.”
“We have to do both,” he added.
Ongoing struggles, opposition from Trump
The 119 miles is the bulk of what Gov. Gavin Newsom, in his State of the State address earlier this year, said he envisions as an operating high-speed line between Merced and Bakersfield as an interim step toward a broader statewide system linking the Bay Area to Los Angeles with electric-powered trains traveling up to 220 mph.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s ongoing struggles with its progress on acquiring the property it needs for construction, as well as the pace of construction itself, were among the concerns outlined by federal officials in their latest letter – the latest salvo in a months-long fracture in what was once a close partnership between the two agencies.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration canceled one federal grant agreement for $929 million for the rail project, and pledged to seek a refund of about $2.6 billion in federal stimulus funds that have already been spent by the state.
Even as that that tug-of-war continues, the FRA earlier this summer agreed to delegate its responsibility for environmental review of high-speed rail segments to the state rail authority.
The state began its efforts in 2013 to buy the property it needs for construction of the rail route though the Valley. While the number of required parcels for right of way has grown as contractors tweak the design of the route, a report Tuesday to the state authority’s finance committee noted that there remain more than 440 pieces of property outstanding out of the 2,009 that are needed.
And contractors cannot build on land that the state does not yet own.
The decision to award construction contracts in the Valley before sufficient planning and land purchases had taken place was driven by a 2017 deadline for project completion that was originally contained in a grant agreement between the state and the Federal Railroad Administration for the federal stimulus funds.
The federal agency later agreed to modify the agreement to require only that the money be spent by the end of September 2017, but requiring completion of the work by the end of 2022.
This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
