Germany set to steal MASSIVE US business deal from Spain to connect LA to San Francisco

The California High-Speed Rail Authority ranked DB as the best company to take over the project, ahead of Renfe.

The authority will now recommend DB as the potential winner of the contract when the board of directors meets on October 19.

The contract is for both the design as well as the technical and commercial aspects of the proposed project which is expected to cost in the region of £48.7billion ($64bn).

It is hoped that the service will be completed by 2029 and provide a rail link between the two Californian cities with a journey time of less than three hours.

In its bid, Renfe formed a consortium with Globalvía and Adif and was one of four international bidders for the contract.

The group formed by the British FirstGroup and the Italian Trenitalia ended in third position and the one led by the China Railway International, in fourth place.

The US rail link has been beset with problems with the bullet train project suffering from  multi-billion dollar cost overruns, construction delays, contracting disputes and ongoing legal issues.

Jon Tapping, the agency’s director of risk management since 2012, recently stepped down from his role, the third executive to do so in less than a year.

The project now finds itself without a permanent chief executive, chief operating officer and risk manager.

The LA Times recently obtained an internal survey of lower-level employees that reported on a high-level of staff turnover making it difficult for the authority to be fully staffed and morale was low and had grown worse in the last three years.

A source told the paper: “There is no stability. The office is in chaos every day.”

Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg.