Transportation

ENR 2018 Top 400 Sourcebook: High-Speed Rail Plows on in California

Construction Package 1 — Precast girder viaducts parallel existing active railroad as part of $3 billion in high-speed rail work.

*PHOTO BY JOHN LIVZEY FOR ENR*

About $3 billion and 119 miles of track construction is underway or under contract on California’s planned high-speed rail, which, ultimately, is proposed to stretch between Sacramento and San Diego. Construction Package 1, the first major construction contract for the first phase of the California High-Speed Rail Program, is a 32-mile stretch between Madera County and Fresno County. It includes 12 grade separations, two viaducts, one trench and a major river crossing over the San Joaquin River. Precast, prestressed concrete girders used for the project are up to 198 ft long. The design-build team of Tutor-Perini/Zachry/Parsons is approximately 55% complete with its $1-billion contract, says Steven Milton, design and construction manager for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. A significant feature of the alignment will be a concrete staggered-arch structure that will rise over the San Joaquin River and State Route 99. Major challenges include extensive utility relocations, working alongside an active freight railroad and completing rights-of-way acquisitions. Completion of CP1 is currently slated for 2019.

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KEYWORDS: ENR Top 400 Sourcebook

Aileen Cho, ENR's deputy editor for infrastructure, is a born-again Angeleno and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. She has been honored, solo or with ENR colleagues, with several journalism awards. For ENR, she has traveled the world, clambering over bridges, touring airports, and descending into tunnels. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun (bridge engineers aren't far behind). She is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Eagle Rock, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

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