Iridium and the US firm Zachry have been chosen by the state of Texas as strategic partners for 50 years to design, plan and develop a major infrastructure corridor with a length of some 1000 km
ACS Infrastructure Development, the US subsidiary of Iridium, the ACS group?s concessions arm, and the Texan company Zachry American Infrastructure, have won a tender to design, plan and develop the I-69 infrastructure corridor for the next 50 years as strategic partners of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).
I-69 is to be a great corridor of road and rail infrastructure crossing the state of Texas from north to south. It will set out from the Río Grande valley towards Houston, providing new routes towards the centre of the Union from the great industrial and logistical centres in southern Texas, and will also have a branch towards the Gulf of Mexico and the port of Corpus Christi. The investment envisaged for the project as a whole is estimated at 30 billion dollars, of which 5 billion is to be invested in the next 7 years.
With this award the ACS Group and Zachry, the biggest construction group in Texas, have become strategic partners of the Texas Department of Transportation and may propose the development of specific projects and actions for whose execution they will have a preferential negotiating option, without public tenders. In fact the consortium already envisages the upgrading of a first route ? US 77 ? for which it is to negotiate a concession with its partner the Texas Department of Transportation, including the construction of a set of highways on a concession basis linking up with US 77 and requiring an investment of 2.5 billion dollars.
The initial design for the project to develop I-69 involves a 1000 km network of highways, roads and railway lines. On this basis Iridium and Zachry, working with the Texas Department of Transportation, are to draw up a Master Plan defining priority actions and how and when they will be carried out.
The winning consortium, led by Iridium and Zachry, with UBS as financial advisor and SDG as infrastructure planning advisor, also includes Dragados, the lead company in the ACS Group?s construction division, and SICE, a company belonging to its industrial services arm and which has considerable experience in the installation of traffic control systems, along with other engineering and construction firms from the state of Texas.
I-69 is a transport corridor identified by the state of Texas as high priority, and work on it is already in progress. In total these corridors involve an infrastructure network of nearly 3000 km and investments of some 150 billion euros, to improve the state?s links with Mexico, the centre and north of the country and Canada. Eight states, including Texas as promoter, are involved in the project.
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