BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com
Public-private partnerships, like that proposed for building the Illiana Expressway, could be the catalyst for making high-speed rail fly in the Midwest, according to the CEO of the United States' leading maker of light rail vehicles.
"In any environment where money is short, you have to go with a P3 (public-private partnership)," Siemens CEO Oliver Hauck said Friday at Munster's Center for Visual and Performing Arts. "And money seems to be short all over right now."
Hauck spoke to about 75 people at the Chicago Area Business and Transportation Luncheon put on by the Indiana High Speed Rail Association and other organizations.
Siemens Transportation Inc. is the leading producer of light rail vehicles in North America, with more than 900 vehicles ordered in the United States and Canada. Hauck has been with Siemens since 1982, emigrating from Germany to the United States to work for the company's U.S. operations in 1985.
"We all want economic growth and prosperity," he told his audience, with his hands firmly planted on the podium. "That's what we call the American Dream. That's what I came here for."
Speaking fluent English with a German accent, Hauck said that dream and high-speed rail may get a boost from the 2016 Olympics, which Chicago is seeking to host.
"My dream is to come into O'Hare and I go down to Indianapolis and take in a little of the (Indianapolis 500) race and then I go back to Chicago and make it back in time for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics," he said to laughter from his audience.
Hauck acknowledged there were plans just five years ago to link the Gary/Chicago International Airport with downtown Chicago by light rail. Siemens was close to landing a contract to build such a system, Hauck said. There were also plans for a high-speed intermodal rail station at the airport.
Making such plans reality would take new ideas for financing high-speed rail systems, according to Hauck.
One is the turnkey approach, in which a single provider like Siemens takes responsibility for designing and building a high-speed rail system from day one. The operator then can take over a rail system that is fully tested and operational.
The turnkey builder can also take responsibility for management and technical operation of the system. Siemens delivered a 7.5-mile light rail system in Houston from Reliant Stadium to downtown in less than 26 months with the turnkey approach.
A second approach bears more similarity to what is being proposed for the Illiana Expressway. There, the public sector takes responsibility for building rail stations, establishing a right-of-way and preparing that right-of-way for building, Hauck said.
A private company then finances and builds rails, electrical systems and train cars. In exchange, the private company gets to run the railroad and collect ticket fares for a period of 30 years.
Europe recently saw one of the first projects of this type when the high-speed HSL-Zuid line was built from Amsterdam to Rotterdam and on to the Belgian border, Hauck said.
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