Title: California High-Speed Train Project: Structuring a Project Development Process to Bring Very High-Speed Rail to the U.S.
Abstract: This paper describes how the California High-Speed Train (HST) Project will be the first to bring very high-speed rail (HSR) service to the U.S. In order to be successful, technological, regulatory, commercial, and political requirements must be identified and proactively addressed. This paper provides an overview of the process that the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) is using to manage the technological challenges and the state and federal safety regulatory requirements for railroads in the U.S. This paper does not address the environmental and regulatory requirements for the HST Project. The HST Project is California’s most ambitious infrastructure project ever attempted and is arguably one of the most complicated rail infrastructure projects in U.S. history, surpassing even the 19th Century’s railroad boom on technical grounds. As such, high levels of regulatory, technical, and project management coordination are needed to ensure that the project is completed, commissioned, and operated with the highest standards of safety, security, efficiency, and passenger convenience. This paper describes the project development process being used to address these issues and to identify the relationships, responsibilities, and communication protocols between the various stakeholder groups. It is critical that the project development protocols support a system design approach for the HST Project and assures the safety of the HSR system, so that it is commensurate with HSR systems around the world. To this end, the HST Project development approach is generally focused on the development, review, and completion of key technical documents to achieve two purposes. The first is that issues stakeholders raise and resolution of those issues should be documented in a technical study or paper. The second is that all technical papers are to be reviewed by the five subsystem disciplines to ensure that a systems design approach is maintained, as well as a review of state and federal regulation to ensure compliance with existing state and federal safety requirements.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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