High-Speed Rail Asks for Your Business’ Help

With $5.5 billion allotted to construction of the Central Valley segment, the Authority is seeking partnerships from the private and public sector. Requests for expression of interest were sent out to thousands of larger overseas companies as well as smaller local ones, said Deputy Executive Director Jeff Barker in a press conference this afternoon.

High-Speed Rail officials said that the entire construction of the San Francisco to Los Angeles rail will only be completed with the cooperation of the private sector. They are seeking potential partners and investors for the construction of the first $5.5 billion segment, and smaller companies can become involved by partnering with larger companies.

“Public participation will start to take place,” Barker said. “This is the opening the door process for businesses and they can help shape the project.”

Barker said officials have reached out to several thousands of companies and Chambers of Commerce.

"This request for expressions of interest is the chance for companies large and small – from the self-employed business person in the Central Valley to multinational corporations – to tell us exactly what roles they hope to play in making high-speed rail travel a reality in California,” said CEO Roelof van Ark in a statement.

To process all this information, the Authority has a team in Sacramento of three full-time staff members and could pull additional staff from engineering or technical groups, said Deputy Program Director Ken Jong of Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc., a planning and construction management organization that oversees implementation of the High-Speed Rail.

“We anticipate a lot of interest and quite a bit of information,” Jong said. “We will catalogue this information and make changes to the review process as necessary.”  

Barker said that high-speed rail officials in Florida did something similar for their projects. There were 1600 attendees in a forum to get information to start shaping that project.

Companies have until March 16, 2011, to respond, according to a written statement. The request applies to either the initial construction segment – about 120 miles through California’s Central Valley – as well as any future phase of the project, including its financing, its core systems (trains, electrification, signaling, etc.), its operations and its maintenance.