California bullet train awards design contracts for Valley route extensions. What’s included?
For the better part of a decade, construction contracts for high-speed rail construction in the San Joaquin Valley have ended in rural areas well short of planned stations in Merced and Bakersfield.
On Wednesday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority took its latest steps to close the gaps at the northern and southern ends of its Valley backbone.
The agency’s board, in a video conference, approved two contracts with engineering consultants – one to draw up preliminary plans to complete a stretch of almost 34 miles between Madera and Merced, and another to start planning a southern extension of 18.5 miles in Kern County, from Shafter to a future station site in north-central Bakersfield.
The two contracts have a combined value of about $86 million. The agreements don’t include construction, but would set the stage for future construction.
“Taken together, these contracts bolster the authority’s effort to have high-speed trains operating in the heart of California by the end of the decade,” said Tom Richards, a Fresno developer and chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority board of directors.
“These contracts demonstrate our ability to leverage lessons learned from past contracts, increase project readiness and prepare for continued progress on this transformative project.”
A team of companies led by Stantec Consulting Services Inc. was chosen from among three bidders for the Madera-Merced extension at a maximum cost of $41 million.
The package will include determining the physical footprint of the project, updates on estimates of project costs, verifying the enhancements to travel time along the route once high-speed trains are operational, mapping the properties that will be needed for the railroad right of way, and assessing utilities that will need to be relocated in advance of construction.
Future options may include drawing up final construction-ready designs for the route, preparation of environmental permits, and developing a plan to buy the required real estate for construction. Those additional options are estimated to cost another $103.4 million.
For the Shafter-Bakersfield extension, the rail board approved awarding a contract of almost $45 million to HNTB Corporation. Like the Madera-Merced extension, the initial contract includes preliminary design, right of way mapping and identifying utility conflicts. An option for the company to work up final construction designs would cost an estimated $72 million more.
Both contracts are for terms up to 27 months.
Three segments of the Central Valley route – often touted as the backbone of a future statewide system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles with electric-powered trains traveling at speeds up to 220 mph – are currently under construction:
Madera to the south end of Fresno
Fresno to the Tulare-Kern county line
Tulare-Kern county line to Shafter, northwest of Bakersfield
It took the rail agency years, however, to settle disputes with cities including Chowchilla and Bakersfield over what route options should be used to reach north to Merced and south to Bakersfield. The delays included conducting detailed environmental reviews for new alternatives to circle the Madera-Merced route to the south and west of Chowchilla and to create a route from Shafter that enters Bakersfield from the north instead of from the west, where there were concerns of disrupting neighborhoods and commercial developments.
The 171-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced is planned to be the first operational segment for high-speed trains. The latest estimates of construction costs for the Valley route between Merced and Bakersfield range from $22.5 billion to $23.9 billion.
Future work would extend that Valley backbone to other parts of the state:
West and north through Los Banos and the Diablo Range via Pacheco Pass to Gilroy, San Jose and ultimately to San Francisco.
South and east through the Tehachapi Mountains into Palmdale in the Mojave Desert, and then south through the San Gabriel Mountains into the San Fernando Valley and on to Los Angeles and Anaheim.
For a full San Francisco-Los Angeles/Anaheim system, the rail agency estimated earlier this year that the costs could range from a low of $72.3 billion to as much as $105.1 billion. Much of that wide variation stems from the uncertainty of how much it would cost to tunnel through mountain ranges, as well as the price of property that would be needed before construction could begin.
In a continuation of the rail board’s meeting on Thursday, directors were expected to approve a detailed environmental analysis for a section of the statewide rail system along the San Francisco Peninsula from downtown San Francisco to San Jose.
The environmental approval and adoption of a finalized route between the two cities is a necessary step for future construction if or when money becomes available.
