The District is preparing to roll out solicitations for a pair of megaprojects that will change the way D.C. residents and suburbanites traverse the nation’s capital.
We don’t have specific dates, but the request for qualifications for an integrated premium transit system (urban streetcars plus a local bus system) and for the South Capitol Street Corridor project (a new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge and a reconstructed highway interchange) will go out this month.
The D.C. Department of Transportation’s streetcar RFQ is a follow-up to a request for information issued last summer, which generated 20 responses from as far away as China and Japan.
The District hopes to enter into a public-private partnership to design, build, finance, operate and maintain a 22-mile streetcar system along four corridors, ultimately connecting Benning Road with Georgetown via Union Station, and Takoma with Maine Avenue SW and Anacostia.
The city’s capital budget includes $400 million for streetcars through fiscal 2019, which is expected to cover the east-west connection to Georgetown, and a study of the north-south corridor.
That same RFQ will address a “premium non-regional bus system” — essentially the Circulator with a much broader footprint.
The second RFQ covers South Capitol Street, including a new South Capitol Street Bridge and the reconstruction of the Suitland Parkway/Interstate-295 interchange. Those two projects are expected to cost $600 million. The District has budgeted $476 million through 2019.
DDOT is expected to host an open house or workshop about two weeks after the RFQs are released. Statements of qualifications will be due roughly 60 days later, followed by a 60-day District review and then, finally, the release of a formal request for proposals to short-listed candidates.
