Now is a good time to be a railroad contractor. As American commuters push for more transportation options, and industry looks to rail as a freight shipping alternative, railway maintenance and construction are in peak demand—and finally, there’s some funding to meet it.
The nation’s largest public transit agencies face an $80 billion maintenance backlog to bring their rail systems to a state of good repair, and within the next six years, almost every transit vehicle—nearly 55,000 vehicles—in rural America will need to be replaced, according a draft of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2009.
The federal government and urban municipalities are starting, dollar by dollar, to tackle the problem. As of June, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposed a total transportation investment of $450 billion over six years—$99.8 billion of which would go toward mass transit. Another $50 billion would go toward building 11 high-speed rail corridors. The U.S. Department of Transportation has already begun awarding the first round of grants to build the rails, which would connect regional cities via trains reaching up to 150 miles per hour.
The funded projects not only stand to change the way people think about transportation, but also create new jobs, leverage contributions from state and private sources, and benefit the environment by reducing the number of cars on the nation’s congested roadways.
Several projects are benefiting communities while keeping contractors’ employees on the payroll.
“Rail construction is in an upward trend right now due to the stimulus money, but we are seeing more competition from firms that do not specialize in railroad construction,” says Scott Norman, chief estimator for Herzog Contracting Corp., St. Joseph, Mo.
Despite the competition, there seems to be a substantial amount of work to go around. “We have created a backlog of profitable work such that the current recession is being managed,” Norman says.
Here’s a look at three different rail projects, all with one goal in mind: mobility.
Rapid Transit
The Texas Department of Transportation is investing $1.8 billion in the
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) rail system to ease the city’s traffic congestion and keep up with urban growth.
Herzog Contracting, in a joint-venture partnership with
Archer Western Contractors, Ltd., Arlington, Texas, won a $500 million contract to build the 13-mile northern portion of the new 28-mile DART Green Line.
Herzog, which built light rail systems in Portland, Ore.; Sacramento, Calif.; San Jose, Calif.; San Diego; Los Angeles; Baltimore and Buffalo, has taken charge of the construction schedule, financials and quality control, while Archer Western has taken charge of engineering and production.
The project, currently 60 percent complete, employs more than 700 workers onsite on a given day. With the heavy civil portion of the work nearly done—along with eight rail stations—the joint-venture is handing off the project this summer to L.K. Comstock, White Plains, N.Y., the electrical and systems contractor.
The challenges of the project so far have been twofold, says Robert DeShurley, Herzog project manager. First is the constant attention to detail and frequently changing plans, with 5,000 pages replaced from the original construction documents. Second is finding and relocating the franchise utilities, such as gas lines and transmission lines.
“This has forced us to have to be incredibly flexible—it’s been difficult to keep our schedule moving in a linear
fashion. We have to get in and get work done when we can,” DeShurley says. “Over the last few months, we have seen those gaps close up, which is allowing us to stay on track for our milestone completion dates so the work doesn’t get pushed to the end of the project.”
With 100 subcontractors on the job and 1.8 million manhours worked, safety has been a primary concern across multiple busy jobsites. Herzog and Archer Western combined their safety strategies to keep the injury rate well below the national average by mandating weekly safety meetings in English and Spanish, jobsite hazard analyses before any task begins, as well as defensive driving courses.
In addition, a program called Review Employees’ Actions and Performance, or “REAP,” tracks each employee’s safety hits and misses and tallies them for public display, a method that motivates the team and brings constant awareness to safety issues.
Currently on schedule and under budget, the DART Green Line is slated to open before December 2010.
DART also is expanding its Blue and Orange lines, to be completed in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
Been Working on the Railroad
In addition to meeting commuter needs, rail construction is a necessity for the nation’s industrial economy. During the past five years,
Volkmann Railroad Builders, Inc., Menomenee Falls, Wis., focused on building tracks for ethanol plants throughout the Midwest until the cost of corn caused a dramatic downturn in the economics of ethanol.
Now, the company has turned its attention to mining operations out West. Volkmann recently wrapped up a rail project as a subcontractor to Ames Construction, Inc., West Valley City, Utah, to build 36 miles of track for Global Rail Group’s new line north of Billings, Mont.
The line carries coal and materials between the new Signal Peak coal mine and Broadview, Mont., where the track connects to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe system.
In fall 2008, Ames began excavation work, heading eastward, with Volkmann following behind to install 1,600-foot lengths of track, which were manufactured in Colorado and Pennsylvania and then shipped by train to Montana.
To keep up with an extremely fast-paced seven-month construction schedule, crews worked 12-hour days, seven days a week, says Rick Volkmann, who founded the rail company in 1975.
Although the company has been building railways for the past 30 years, modern machinery and methods mean it can happen a lot faster than in the days of wooden ties and lots of hard labor. Volkmann used pre-formed concrete ties—90,000 to be exact—and spring-loaded steel clips for faster installation and better track longevity.
Approximately 30 Volkmann employees—specially trained in operating unique equipment like rail heaters and vibrators, a rail threading machine and a ballast tamping machine—kept on pace to complete the project last month.
History Meets Progress
In the Gulf Coast, at another industrial transportation hub, the recently completed New Orleans Public Belt Railway (NOPBR) project not only improved rail traffic flow, but also removed blight from a neighborhood on Tchoupitoulas Street.
DonahueFavret Contractors, Inc., Mandeville, La., completely revamped the site with new ornamental fencing, landscaping, parking, and administrative and storage buildings. The rail hub provides switching and hauling services for seven railroad lines—Amtrak, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Canadian National, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific—with approximately 22,000 rail cars passing through daily. NOPBR also connects to the Port of New Orleans, one of the world’s busiest ports.
The 100-year old facility, with one of a few existing turntables in the United States, suffered from more than 25 miles of track damage and was showing its age. NOPBR received $9 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency public assistance funding to complete the project.
One major component of the project was the 12,000-square-foot masonry and steel round house, which DonahueFavret renovated with an attractive curtain wall system, tuck-pointing and waterproofing, new roofing and a new electrical system. The round house now can service six locomotives at a time for painting or engine and chassis repair.
The project saw several revisions to the scope of work, which were discussed at weekly project meetings between the owner, DonahueFavret, the subcontractors and the design team.
“The owner had representation onsite almost at all times, and that was a big part of why this was a successful project,” says Robert Favret, executive vice president. “We reviewed and revised the schedule every week to meet the owner’s needs.”
Older structures always bring surprises, and in this case, crews discovered deteriorated sewer lines, inoperable storm drains, and years of undocumented revisions to power conductors and communications systems.
Other setbacks came up as well. Excavation for the east parking lot had to be delayed when the river level became too high during construction. Also, a severe crack in one of the support buildings meant an unplanned demolition.
The railroad itself is now stronger than ever, with granite rock track foundations instead of crushed seashells as a base. It’s also a major aesthetic improvement, benefiting the local retailers and residences.
“It gave everybody a new feeling about the Tchoupitoulas corridor,” Favret says.
In 2008, Americans took approximately 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, the highest level of riders in 50 years, according to the
American Public Transportation Association.
However, only one high-speed rail line can keep up with commuter demand: Amtrak’s Acela service between Washington, D.C., and Boston. And according to a recent DOT Federal Transit Administration study, 35 percent of the nation’s largest mass transit systems are in poor or marginal condition.
That’s about to change.
In May, the DOT allocated $742.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to speed up construction of 11 transit projects already under way in nine states. The federal assistance includes:
- Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail: $36 million
- Dallas Northwest/Southwest Light Rail: $78.4 million
- Denver West Corridor Light Rail: $40 million
- Dulles Corridor Metrorail (Washington, D.C.) extension: $77.3 million
- Los Angeles Metro Gold Line extension: $66.7 million
- Long Island Rail Road (New York) East Side Access: $195.4 million
- Salt Lake City Mid-Jordan Light Rail: $90.9 million
- Seattle Sound Transit Light Rail extension: $44 million
- Second Avenue Subway (New York), Phase 1: $78.9 million
- South Corridor Light Rail (Portland, Ore.) extension: $32 million
- Springfield Pioneer Parkway (Oregon) bus rapid transit: $2.9 million
Nationwide, other local commuter rail and bus projects are in the works, such as New Jersey’s $8.7 billion project to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River to New York, and central Florida’s $615 million commuter rail system from Deland to Poinciana.
Voters also approved pro-transit measures in Aspen, Colo.; Honolulu; Jonesboro, Ark.; Lawrence, Kan.; and San Francisco; and statewide in New Mexico, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.