Quandel Consultants has experience guiding an organization through the alternative analysis process to identify a set of "reasonable and feasible" passenger rail routes to be analyzed in a Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement. In cooperation with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the states that comprise the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, Quandel Consultants has developed a methodology to reduce the universe of routes to a set of reasonable and feasible routes suitable for high-speed rail. Using this methodology, the routes are evaluated against the following criteria:
• Travel time
• Market size
• Capital cost
• Operating costs
• System
connectivity
• Environmental features • Safety
• Reliability
Because the Alternatives Analysis is an interactive process, a workshop is held with the project stakeholders (usually the state and the FRA) and Quandel Consultants to qualitatively assess each route against the above criteria. A cooperative decision is made by the stakeholders as to which routes are identified as reasonable and feasible routes
