Jacobs/HDR Win Contract to Convert New York City Freight Line Into Passenger Service

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority superior plans to transform a freight line in New York Metropolis right into a commuter mild rail. Known as the Interborough Categorical (IBX), 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 Henningson, Durham & Richardson Structure and Engineering, or Jacobs/HDR, for practically $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 possibly 200,000 individuals a day,” mentioned Janno Lieber, CEO and performing chair of the MTA throughout an agency board meeting in late July.

The MTA estimates the IBX 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 components of town the place transit is commonly scarce. Although 900,000 New Yorkers dwell inside a half mile of the route, half don’t have automobiles and lots of dwell in what the 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 IBX ought to pace up commutes inside and between the boroughs, based on the MTA.

Late final month, the company chosen the Jacobs/HDR bid from six complete candidates. The opposite bidders included AECOM USA Inc., Arup US Inc., a three way partnership of HNTB New York Engineering and Structure P.C. and STV Included, EXP Companies P.C., and a three way partnership of Gannett Fleming Engineers and Architects P.C. with AtkinsRéalis PA P.C. dba AtkinsRéalis Structure and Engineering. 

The MTA declined to reveal the worth of the 5 different challenge bids. 

The MTA says it landed on Jacobs/HDR due to the partnership’s “intensive expertise performing comparable work on tasks of comparable magnitude and complexity” and its “progressive method to the 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 making 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, setting up stations, and offering traction energy. An choice within the Jacobs/HDR contract permits the primary section to be break up into three for an extra $8.6 million.

The inked design-build contract marks progress on a challenge that the Regional Plan Affiliation first proposed within the Nineteen Nineties. Of the completely different stretches of freight rails not getting used for public passengers in New York, changing this stretch of tracks has been a precedence for the group as a result of it will serve the best variety of potential riders by far, mentioned Kate Slevin, the chief vp for the RPA, a nonprofit that advocates for accessible transit improvement within the New York metropolitan space.

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

Initially, the RPA envisioned the road as operating 26 miles into the Bronx, however a northern portion of the right-of-way will as an alternative be included into the MTA extension of the Metro-North Railroad New Haven line to Penn Station. 

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

Although the MTA has not but provided an estimated completion date, Slevin mentioned the RPA will likely be paying consideration to ensure the event stays inside its current right-of-way as a lot as potential. Integration into native communities, both by fostering new companies, supporting current inexperienced areas—or each—will likely be essential components of the IBX too, Slevin mentioned, together with ensuring locals on both aspect of the tracks will be capable to entry trenched parts.