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California High-Speed Rail gets encouraging responses from potential bidders

Xinhua, October 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

As the number of companies or teams responding to the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) on its request to express interest in participating in the project has risen to 36, Jeff Morales, the CEO of the authority said on Tuesday that their responses are "very positive and encouraging."

At a CHSRA board meeting in the state capital, Morales and other staffs briefed the board on the latest development of the project, including the responses to the Expression of Interests (EOI) request, which was issued in June and had a deadline of submission on Sept. 28.

The 36 responses involved private sectors and world-class firms ranging from financiers and investors, major infrastructure developers and international consortia, rolling stock and systems providers, operators and others from the United States, Europe, Australia, China and Japan.

A few of them expressed their interest in helping build the whole Initial Operating Segment (IOS) South and North in a package including the civil works, track, infrastructure, stations and rolling stock. But more of them are focusing on one or a few elements, Morales said.

In the next step, the CHSRA will meet the respondents one-on-one to discuss their EOIs. The outcome of the discussions could lead to the CHSRA developing a procurement for the delivery of an IOS.

The IOS-South stretches from Merced to the San Fernando Valley while the IOS-North extends from San Jose and Merced to Bakersfield.

The initial operations of about 410 miles (660 km) between San Jose near the Silicon Valley and Burbank near Los Angeles are planned to begin in 2022.

If the program went on well, by 2029, the California High-Speed Rail system would run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of exceeding 200 miles (320 km) per hour.

The system will eventually extend to Sacramento and San Diego, totaling 800 miles (1287 km) with up to 24 stations.

The estimated cost of the phase I of the project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles is 68 billion U.S. dollars.

Though the CHSRA already got in hands about 3.3 billion dollars of federal funds, 9 billion of state funds and "Cap-and-Trade" auction proceeds which is estimated to be of 650 million dollars for the 2014-2016 Fiscal Years and 25 percent of the total each year after 2016, the money is still not enough for the total cost.

The California government started to pursue the idea of high-speed rail in 1981.

In 2002, following the release of the authority' s first business plan in 2000, the Senate passed a bill to authorize a 9.95 billion-dollar bond measure to finance the system.

In November 2008, the bond measure was approved by the state's voters, making it the nation's first ever voter-approved financing mechanism for high-speed rail.

In 2009, 8 billion-dollars in federal funds was made available nationwide as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and California sought and successfully secured 3.3 billion of the funds.

Attracting long-term private investment is among their goals to provide funding for the project, Morales said in a previous interview with Xinhua. Endi