NEW YORK — Balfour Beatty, the international infrastructure group, announced that Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB), its recently acquired professional services business, was awarded three new contracts to manage high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects in Illinois, Ohio, and Florida.

" Building on PB's several decades of planning and analysis of high-speed rail in the U.S., and extensive experience of the design and management of high-speed rail projects in Asia, we are now a key player in implementing these important rail projects in the U.S., said Balfour Beatty Chief Executive, Ian Tyler."

The Illinois Department of Transportation selected PB as program manager for the high-speed rail, 284-mile signature route from Chicago to St. Louis, with $1.1 billion in Federal high-speed rail funding targeted for this project.

The Ohio Department of Transport selected a PB-led team to provide consultant services for development of a new intercity passenger rail service on an existing rail freight corridor in the Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati "3C" corridor, a distance of approximately 250 miles. PB will carry out environmental work for various components and design for the track and capacity improvements. The project was awarded funding of $400 million by the Federal Railroad Administration.

In Florida, PB will lead the consulting team selected by the Florida Department of Transportation to undertake planning and design of a 230-mile high-speed rail line between Orlando and Miami. The project involves preliminary engineering and environmental analysis, which includes recommending the final alignment and train technology to be used.

PB is already leading the program management team overseeing implementation, from design to commissioning, of the California High-Speed Rail, an 800-mile-long system serving Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County, and San Diego. The system will use state-of-the-art electrified trains capable of speeds of up to 220 mph. The majority of the system will be at-grade alongside existing railroads, roads and highways. The project was recently allocated $2.25 billion in Federal funding, which will help accelerate the building of the system.

PB is managing projects accounting for a combined $4 billion of the $8 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) high-speed and intercity passenger rail grants awarded by the federal government in 2010. PB was also selected as one of several consultants for the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission, a three-state authority charged with planning implementation of high-speed rail in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston.