Two business consortiums competing to build, operate and maintain RTD rail lines to Denver International Airport and the west suburbs delivered their proposals at a public hearing today.
Both groups — Denver Transit Partners and Mountain-air Transit Partners — have agreed to provide $900 million in up-front financing for the estimated $2.3 billion public/private project.
The financing will save RTD money in the project’s early days and protect the agency’s interests, said Brian Middleton, RTD’s chief on the public/private project.
“That is money at risk, if they don’t perform they can lose parts of that. If they have a bad month, they can lose 25 percent of (RTD) payments for that month. It provides a powerful incentive.”
The teams submitted plans, including their bids, last Friday. The agency hasn’t made the bids public yet.
“Now that we have gotten the technical presentation, next week we will see the financial information. We need to merge the two together and decide not only the most cost-effective but the best long-range program to meet all of our needs,” said Lee Kemp, chairman of the 15-member RTD board.
The Board is expected to choose between the two plans at its June 15 meeting after consulting with staff and financial advisers, J.P Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
Both proposals call for design, and other preliminary work to begin as early as August and trains to go into service in 2016. RTD and its partners in the biggest construction project in the region since the building of DIA in the 1990s would enter into a 46-year contract.
The principal firms involved in the two teams include international engineering, construction, maintenance design company Fluor Enterprises Inc., and construction firm Kiewit, which was responsible for much of the work on T-Rex, which expanded highway and rails service for Interstate 25 and Interstate 225 south of Denver.
Denver Transit Partners, headed by Fluor, includes MacQuarie Capital Group, which would provide financing; Balfour Beatty Rail Inc.; Hyundai Rotem, which would provide rail cars; Alternate Concepts Inc., a Boston-based transportation management company that would operate and maintain the rail network; and Ames Construction, an Aurora-based construction company.
Mountain Air Transit Partners includes Siemens, which would provide rail cars; HSBC Equity, the financing firm; Kiewit; Veolia Transportation, which already operates and manages part of Denver’s bus fleet; and others.
Members of both teams spoke at the four-hour meeting in the Paramount Theater, pledging to provide secure facilities, access to work for disadvantaged and small businesses, top-flight engineering, cutting edge technology and safe, on-time service.
“We will deliver you a world-class system, on-time and on budget,” said Malcolm Macintyre, project director for Mountain Air.
“We will reinvest in the local economy by hiring local businesses to subcontract and hire local workers to work on our team,” Fluor’s Patrick Flaherty promised.
The project includes the 23-mile train between Union Station and DIA, the Gold Line commuter train to Arvada/Wheat Ridge and the portion of the Northwest commuter rail line from Denver to Westminster.
Several hundred people attended the meeting, including a number of RTD staff and board members.
Tom McGhee: (303)954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
