Jacobs/HDR Win Contract to Convert NYC Freight Line Into Passenger Service

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority superior plans to transform a freight line in New York Metropolis right into a commuter gentle rail. Known as the Interborough Categorical, the service will cowl 14 miles via Brooklyn and Queens and create 19 new stations on an current right-of-way. The design-build contract went to a partnership between Jacobs Civil Consultants Inc. and HDR, for almost $166 million. 

“I like this—we’re utilizing underutilized current infrastructure, a freight rail line that will get at most two trains a day and we’re going to show it into a lightweight rail line that serves perhaps 200,000 folks a day,” mentioned Janno Lieber, MTA’s CEO and appearing chair throughout an agency board meeting in late July. 

The company estimates the rail line will cost a total of $5.5 billion, with half of the funding already put aside within the company’s 2025-2029 capital plan.

The trail of the proposed prepare line arches via elements of town the place transit is usually scarce. Whereas 900,000 New Yorkers stay inside one-half mile of the route, half don’t have vehicles and lots of stay in what MTA refers to as “rail deserts,” or areas with out significant transit entry. With an end-to-end run time of 32 minutes and connection factors at subway traces, bus stops and the Lengthy Island Rail Highway, the Interborough Categorical ought to velocity up commutes inside and between the boroughs, in accordance with the company.

Late final month, it chosen the Jacobs/HDR bid from six submissions that additionally included these from AECOM USA Inc., Arup US Inc., a three way partnership of HNTB New York Engineering and Structure P.C. and STV Inc., EXP Companies P.C., and a three way partnership of Gannett Fleming Engineers and Architects P.C. and AtkinsRéalis Structure and Engineering. 

MTA declined to reveal the values of the 5 different challenge bids. 

The company says it chosen Jacobs/HDR due to the partnership’s “intensive expertise” on related initiatives and its “progressive method” to challenge sequencing, logistics and design coordination, and demonstrated understanding of the hall constraints,” the company wrote in its July board action Items. 

Jacobs/HDR may have 24 months to develop early designs and bridging paperwork for 2 additional design/construct contracts, one for every of two building phases. The primary focuses on getting ready the hall for the prepare—bridge restore, utility relocation, environmental remediation and extra—whereas the second is devoted to putting in the sunshine rail, together with duties like laying tracks, developing stations and offering traction energy. An possibility within the Jacobs/HDR contract permits the primary part to be cut up into three for an extra $8.6 million.

The inked design-build contract marks progress on a challenge first proposed within the Nineteen Nineties by the Regional Plan Affiliation, a nonprofit that advocates for accessible transit growth within the New York Metropolis metropolitan space. Of various stretches of freight rails not getting used for public passengers within the metropolis, changing this stretch has been a precedence for the group as a result of it will serve the very best variety of doable riders by far, mentioned Kate Slevin, its govt vice chairman. 

“A lot of the transit system in New York Metropolis was constructed at a time when the objective was to enhance entry out and in of Manhattan,” Slevin mentioned. “However there’s been loads of progress and growth in Brooklyn and Queens,” together with alongside the waterfront in Sundown Park and Bay Ridge, the place the Interborough Categorical will finish, she added. 

Initially, the group envisioned the road as working 26 miles into the Bronx, however a northern portion of the right-of-way will as an alternative be integrated into MTA’s extension of the Metro-North Railroad New Haven line to Penn Station on Manhattan. 

Slevin credited New York Gov. Kathy Hutchul’s pursuit of transit growth with the challenge transferring ahead, together with outreach campaigns and resolved considerations about how freight and passenger service can function alongside the identical traces.

MTA has not but provided an estimated completion date, however Slevin mentioned the Regional Plan Affiliation will watch to verify the event stays inside its current right-of-way as a lot as doable. Integration into native communities, both by fostering new companies, supporting current inexperienced areas—or each—can even be necessary elements of the challenge, she mentioned, together with ensuring locals on both facet of the tracks will be capable of entry trenched parts.