Infra Insight Blog

California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., has signed California Senate Bill (SB) 785. As my colleague Nancy Smith has observed, enactment of SB 785 is a major step forward for the State of California, because now many more state and local agencies can use design-build.

One of the immediate benefits of this change is that the much-anticipated Caltrain electrification project will be able to proceed as a design-build procurement. The authority of the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (JPB) to issue design-build contracts was slated to expire at the end of this year, but SB 785 ...

In an important victory for the $5 billion Honolulu rail transit project, on December 27, 2012 the U.S. District Court in Hawaii issued a judgment allowing construction of the first three phases of the 20-mile Project to continue pending the completion of additional environmental analysis regarding the last construction phase the Project in downtown Honolulu.  The Court’s judgment keeps in effect in Federal Transit Administration’s approval of the Project and the $1.5 billion Full Funding Grant Agreement for the Project recently executed by the FTA and the City.  The Court’s ...

On December 19, 2012 the Federal Transit Administration executed a $1.5 billion Full Funding Grant Agreement for $ 5 billion, 20-mile, Honolulu rail transit project.  The Project will serve the heavily congested corridor between the west side of O'ahu and downtown Honolulu.  The Project will provide transit access to major employment centers, activity centers, and tourist destinations in Honolulu, including the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Aloha Stadium, the Honolulu International Airport, Chinatown, the downtown business center, the Civic Center, the Port of Honolulu, and the Ala ...

On June 15, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica and Rep. Bill Shuster, Chairman of the Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Material Subcommittee, introduced the Competition for Intercity Passenger Rail in America Act.

Chairman Mica said: After 40 years of costly and wasteful Soviet-style operations under Amtrak, this proposal encourages private sector competition, investment and operations in U.S. passenger rail service. The legislation would force Amtrak to sell the Northeast Corridor (NEC) to the U.S. government, establish a committee ...

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T) are in the early phases of procuring a firm to enter into a Public Private Partnership to design, construct, operate, maintain and finance a cross regional passenger rail service known as the Cotton Belt Rail Line starting on or about 2013.

The Cotton Belt Rail Line PPP project is intended to provide regional rail connectivity for communities along the project corridor to Fort Worth, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Airport, the DART transit network, and major activity centers along the corridor.  This ...