The Regional Transportation District says it has received a confidential, unsolicited proposal for the North Metro Rail Project, part of RTD’s FasTracks program.

The proposal was submitted February 22 from a team led by Graham Contracting Ltd. RTD staff will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the proposal consistent with the agency’s Unsolicited Proposals Policy to see if the proposal has merit. If so, RTD will then pursue a competitive procurement process and release a request for proposals (RFP) for competing proposals, consistent with RTD’s policy and previous announcement to release an RFP later this year.

In January, RTD announced it would release an RFP later this year to build North Metro up to 72nd Avenue by refinancing some of agency’s debt, issuing new sales tax bonds and using available local funds. Thus, whether through RTD’s initial plan or this unsolicited proposal process, RTD plans to release an RFP for the North Metro Line this year.

The North Metro project is an 18.4-mile electrified commuter rail line that will connect Denver and Adams County by serving Commerce City, Northglenn and Thornton.

Over the past few years, RTD has been very public with its “call for innovation” to the private sector asking for solutions to help RTD complete the partially funded FasTracks projects as soon as possible. This was the premise behind RTD’s first industry forum called “Transformation Through Transportation,” held Sept. 27, 2011.

“We’ve been encouraging the industry to think outside the box and invest in our projects to get them done sooner rather than later, and this is yet another example of how the market is speaking,” said RTD General Manager Phil Washington.

In March 2012, RTD received an unsolicited proposal from Kiewit Infrastructure for the I-225 Rail Project. After a competitive process, Kiewit was awarded a contract to design and build the whole line by the end of 2015, with the opening scheduled in 2016.