KHOU-TV's Jeremy Desel ran a story this evening concerning the latest discrepancies about the cost of Metro Rail. It seems that business owner Paul Magaziner came across some information that contradicts what the unelected Metro board has been stating recently about project costs. Moreover, the source of the discrepancies is coming from none other than Metro itself.
Last month, the Metro board announced that it had approved a deal (though it had not signed a contract) with Parsons Transport Group where Parsons would lead a consortium to build four of the Metro Solutions Phase 2 rail lines, but not including the Wheeler / Richmond rail alignment. This deal would involve building a total 20 miles of Metro's planned 30 miles light rail for a price $1.46 billion. The costs of the North Corridor and Southeast Corridors were announced to be $387 and $441 million respectively. Desel's accompanying news story showed footage of last month's board meeting where Chairman David Wolff expressed optimism of falling costs, presumably due to a fall in materials costs resulting from the current economic downturn.
However, apparently in an FTA Letter of No Prejudice communication dated March 23rd 2009, the costs of the North and Southeast Corridors were stated at $896,797,000 and $911,211,000 respectively.
Desel's story quotes Metro VP George Smalley:
... in no way was there an attempt to mislead the public.
Smalley also says that the $900 million per line numbers mentioned in the Federal Transit Administration letters are likely the best estimate.
"The number that is in the FTA letter is the latest estimate. I’m not going to say it will be the final number. I don't think it will be," Smalley said.
Smalley says the cost of acquiring land, rail cars for the future and financing are what make up the difference between the contract cost and the actual cost.
Ergo, Metro has been telling the public and Parsons one thing and the FTA something entirely different concerning project costs. At $897 million, the 5.4 miles of the North Corridor will run $166 million per mile. The Southeast Corridor will run at $134 million per mile. At costs like this, the 30 miles of Phase 2 will run $4.5 billion plus, a figure the Wizard predicted 18 months ago.
Taxpayers deserve better than this. The discrepancies between both sets of numbers is between $2 - $3 billion, a figure so large that the entire Metro board and Metro President Frank Wilson all need to be fired, if for no other reasons that they have shown themselves to be incompetent and untrustworthy. And, this project needs to be shelved once and for all.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at April 6, 2009 10:58 PM