WILMINGTON — This week City Council will vote to approve a firm to begin engineering work on the long-planned rail realignment project, a massive $1 billion plan to shift freight rail across the Cape Fear and repurpose rail lines in Wilmington as a light passenger-rail service.
Read more: This ambitious railway plan could reshape Wilmington. It could also cost a billion dollars
If approved, the city will enter into a $2.5 million contract with AECOM Technical Services of North Carolina, Inc. to perform engineering for the project, along with environmental and historic (i.e. protected historic areas and buildings) reviews. The environmental review, in particular, is an important step for any large-scale infrastructure project.
The city itself will not pay out of pocket for the contract. Instead, funding will come from grants awarded by the state and federal government last year.
Last June, the city received a $2 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for grant funding from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant program to support further preliminary engineering and environmental studies required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In October, NCDOT agreed to $500,000 in matching funds over two years to help support studies required by NEPA.
The city solicited proposals in early January and received nine submissions by the mid-February deadline. These were narrowed down to four and then one, by the city’s Director of Rail Realignment Aubrey Parsley, Executive Director of the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Mike Kozlosky, Wilmington Director of Finance Jennifer Maready, and NCDOT Rail Division’s Manager of Planning and Development.
The contract is expected to last about three years and will be supervised by Parsley. City staff are recommending approval by city council.
The Wilmington City Council meeting will held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21 at the Wilmington Convention Center. The meeting will be open to the public but social distancing will be enforced. The meeting will also be streamed live on GTV8 (Spectrum Cable channel 8) online at and wilmingtonnc.gov/gtv.
