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Balfour Beatty recently signed contracts with Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and San Diego Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB) for more than $300 million of new rail engineering work.



MBTA’s 18-mile Greenbush project, which is being completed on a design-build basis, would restore commuter rail service on an existing right-of-way through Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset and Scituate, Mass. All but the right-of-way’s first one-and-a-half miles currently are out of service or abandoned and would need to be reconstructed as a single-track line with four controlled passing sidings, each about a mile long.



The project also includes construction of seven new commuter rail stations, each with an 800-foot-long, high-level platform; and several 200- to 1,000-space parking lots, providing about 3,000 spaces throughout the corridor.



Nine existing single-span railroad bridges will be reconstructed with new ballast deck superstructures, and new or rehabilitated abutments and wingwalls. Of the 43 existing grade crossings on the route, 10 will be closed and eight separated. The remaining 25 crossings, plus one new one and three pedestrian crossings, will be reconstructed with new warning systems and supplemental safety measures.



Balfour Beatty’s work on the project is slated to begin soon, and be completed in mid-2005.



San Diego’s MTDB also contracted Balfour Beatty for expansion work: Joint venture Balfour Beatty/Ortiz Enterprises Inc. in late February was given notice to proceed for the La Mesa segment of MTDB’s Mission Valley East trolley extension.



The $431 million project is designed to connect the trolley’s existing Blue Line in Mission Valley to the system’s Orange Line in La Mesa. Balfour Beatty/Ortiz is working on a 2.8-mile segment of the 5.8-mile extension.