as part of the project, and finalise the requirements for property acquisition and additional costs. A separate tender was let in October for the fibre-optic cabling, with three bidders shortlisted. Bombardier Transportation was contracted as the builder of the new fast trains in late November. The VLocity trains, with a top speed of 210 km/h, were to be constructed at Bombardier's Dandenong factory at a cost of $410 million, including a 30-year maintenance agreement. Meanwhile, the government suffered sustained criticism of the project following the release of research commissioned by the National Party and carried out by ACIL Consulting, which claimed that the economic benefits of fast rail had been massively overestimated. However, the government denied the report's findings, and the Liberal Party refused to support the Nationals' stark opposition to the project, though it agreed the episode showed the plan had not been sufficiently scrutinised. Project scope Because the state government's agencies did not have sufficient resources or experience to successfully procure a major rail project, the Department of Infrastructure chose to offer bidding consortia substantial freedom to submit a scope of works that would meet the government's objectives. In order to do this, the tenders for each of the four routes to be upgraded were offered separately, and civil engineering firms were encouraged to bid in partnership with signalling providers. The state's objectives included improving journey times "to the maximum extent possible on a value-for-money basis", maintaining a suitable standard of safety, achieving sustained patronage growth, minimising cost to the taxpayer and transferring risk to the private sector, and meeting ambitious deadlines for completion. Tendering firms were asked to design their bids to serve two peak services and one counter-peak on each of the Ballarat, Bendigo and Gippsland corridors. The project had five key components: upgrading rail infrastructure: construction works were undertaken to upgrade rail infrastructure to allow trains to travel safely at speeds of up to 160 km/h on the country sections of the corridors new fast trains: a total of 29 new VLocity trains were purchased installation of fibre optic cable: a new fibre optic cable network was installed as part of the upgraded rail signalling and communications systems new timetable: a revised 2006 V/Line timetable was developed, incorporating some faster and several additional train services interconnecting bus services: improvements to connecting bus services to the fast rail regional centres. The delivery of these objectives entailed