Inflation forcing RTD's West line to go bare bones

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 16, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Tim Hussin / The Rocky

RTD's West Corridor light rail is under construction at Kipling Street and 13th Avenue. Kipling will be closed to accommodate it from 9 p.m. Thursday until 5 a.m. Friday.

The meat and potatoes of the West Corridor light rail project - moving dirt, laying track and building bridges, tunnels and walls - has contributed the most to a 38 percent jump in price since voters approved FasTracks four years ago.

An analysis of four successive West Corridor budgets - increasing from $511.8 million in 2004 to the current $707.6 million - shows the trade-offs that RTD has made to keep the cost from soaring even higher.

For riders, it means fewer benches, less shelter from rain and snow, one less pedestrian bridge and at least one scaled- back station on the 12.1-mile line through Denver, Lakewood and Golden.

For RTD's rail managers, it means no system of live communication with the trains, no remote ability to turn power on and off, and no security cameras like those on the T-REX corridor and other light rail stations.

Inflation estimates wrong

RTD is on the lookout for outside funding to restore some of the cuts, particularly security-related ones.

"There are opportunities to get grants to restore things like cameras," said Liz Rao, RTD's program manager for FasTracks. "But we will have security personnel out there. It's not like there won't be any security."

RTD has a $37 million contingency fund for the West Corridor and has invited Denver, Lakewood, Golden, Jefferson County, neighborhoods, businesses and other parties to come up with a consensus list of items that should be added back if the project has any money left toward the end.

"We obviously hope with that contingency fund that it'll all get back in," said Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy. "We certainly have a little bit of time. I think we have a few months to work through this."

Precipitous cost increases for steel, concrete, copper and other items needed in big quantities started even before the public vote on FasTracks in 2004 and spiked in 2005, throwing all of RTD's inflation factors way out of whack.

Now the latest financial setback to hit the West Corridor project is the surging cost of fuel, especially diesel to operate the heavy machinery and generators used in construction.

"Fuel cost has impacted every single item on here in some way," said Dennis Cole, RTD's project manager on the West Corridor. "Even deliveries. Stuff has to get here."

Site work costs doubled

If there is any good news for RTD, it is that it already has purchased the steel rail and concrete ties for the job to insulate it from future price jumps.

In addition, it recently locked in a maximum construction price with its two main contractors - who now will bear the risk of further inflation.

Rao said the West Corridor is now well-shielded from further drastic increases. But it is just the first FasTracks rail corridor to go to construction, while five other new lines and extensions to three existing ones remain to be nailed down.

They face cost increases until they are finalized.

Rick Clarke, a FasTracks senior manager, said the only significant West Corridor component remaining to be bid is the fare collection system.

"We feel pretty good about the new budget although there are always change orders that come up," he said. "You can never catch everything in design."

The Rocky's analysis of West Corridor budgets shows increases in nearly every category. The biggest jumps were in categories heavy with material and labor costs. Where earthmovers, graders, bulldozers and cranes combine with carpenters, ironworkers, track layers and concrete workers, the price tag skyrocketed.

The site work budget category, which includes demolition, clearing, utility relocation and noise walls, more than doubled from the original budget, going from $56.7 million in the 2003 plan to $115.3 million.

But not all of it is due to inflation. RTD is discovering it needs to do more work than originally planned.

Cole, the project manager, said RTD found it needed deeper foundations for the corridor's many walls once it better examined soil conditions.

The largest single budget category, guideway and track, went up the largest dollar amount, from the original $87.6 million to $153 million - nearly 75 percent.

This category includes the construction of steel and concrete bridges, tunnels, retaining walls and fill, and all of the tracks and switches.

And even with the cutbacks in train system controls and communications, the cost in the systems category went up 45.8 percent, from $53.9 million to $78.6 million. That reflects the overhead high- voltage copper wire and the steel poles from which it is suspended.

Even so, the jump would have been higher if RTD hadn't been able to eliminate one of the 13 power substations along the track, a reduction enabled by cutting back to a single-track between the Denver Federal Center and the Jefferson County government complex at the end of the line.

What went down? Not much. The cost of stations, due to the cutbacks, dropped slightly.

And the purchase of light rail cars went down substantially when RTD exercised an option to buy them at the old T-REX price and eliminated the need for several of them by cutting service on the single-track segment to every 15 minutes instead of every five minutes.

flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5247

FasTracks West Corridor costs

Broken down into its main categories, the increases in the West Corridor light rail project can be tracked:

CATEGORY / ORIGINAL BUDGET / 2008 BUDGET / INCREASE

Guideway $88 million $153 million 74%

Stations $60.3 million $57.4 million -4.8%

Sitework $56.7 million $115.3 million 103.4%

Systems $53.9 million $78.6 million 45.8%

All construction $262.8 million $406.3 million 54.6%

Real estate $39.6 million $50.3 million 27%

Light rail trains $125.6 million $76.9 million -38.8%

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