Owner’s engineers announced for High Frequency Rail project

MONTREAL — VIA Rail Canada and the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) have announced the hiring of a joint venture formed by Aecom and Arup that will act as the owner’s engineers for the High Frequency Rail project in the Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor.

VIA Rail and the CIB have formed a joint project office to study the initiative. Last year the CIB committed $55 million in funding for planning and pre-procurement work and is working with VIA Rail to further explore VIA Rail’s proposal for the project, a Jan. 28 release explained. The federal government added $16.1 million in funding for Transport Canada and VIA Rail to further support the project.

The owner’s engineers’ role during the pre-procurement due-diligence phase is to support the project office on all technical and engineering matters. The engineers’ scope of work includes general technical and engineering support for the project workstreams and specific planning and engineering activities. The engineers will also support the project office in obtaining an environmental assessment and undertaking site investigation studies, including geotechnical studies.

Under the proposal, VIA Rail would create new trains on dedicated tracks between the major centres and new routes would be established on discontinued and lower-density rail infrastructure, the release stated.