First
Leg of Expo Line Falls $145 Million Short |
By Jorge Casuso
November 2 -- Plans to bring light rail to Santa Monica
have fallen short, after transit officials announced Thursday that
there may not be enough money to bring the first leg of the Exposition
line to Culver City.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials said the agency constructing
the line originally slated to cost $640 million will need another $145 million
to complete the stretch from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City.
The second leg -- which is in the planning stages -- would bring the Expo line
to the beachside city, where officials have purchase the Sears property Downtown
for possible use as a terminal.
On Thursday, the Exposition Construction Authority, which directly oversees
the project, voted to ask the MTA to provide the extra money for the train system
the agency will operate.
Based on recently negotiated contracts, “the 8.6-mile first stage of
the line "cannot be completed as originally planned," Richard Thorpe,
chief executive of the Expo authority and the MTA's top construction official,
stated in a written report.
Without the funds, Thorpe said, the line will end at the La Cienega station
before it reaches Culver City.
The rising cost of the project, which broke ground in August, is due to a nearly
23 percent hike in costs, Thorpe said.
Project officials seem to have seriously underestimated the rising
cost of labor and materials when they developed the Expo Line's
budget in 2005.
Original estimates projected the cost of labor and materials would rise by
3.5 percent a year, instead of the actual 11 percent annual rise, Thorpe said.
Despite the shortfall, Santa Monica Council member Pam O’Connor,
who chairs the MTA Board, said she is “confident” the
project will be completed and that the line will eventually end
up in Santa Monica, as planned.
“This emphasizes why we have to keep moving ahead,” said O’Connor,
who represents Santa Monica on the Expo board. “Getting the funding to
complete the project is a struggle… We need to work on identifying other
funding sources.
“I am not disappointed, because I never thought it would
be easy,” O’Connor said in a telephone interview from
Paris. “This is building a rail line. It’s not an easy
thing to do. It never is.”
O’Connor said the original cost estimates seemed accurate
at the time and that rising costs are impacting all transportation
projects, including highways, subways and rail lines.
“Nobody could have anticipated the extreme rate of escalation,
so if hey had used such a dollar amount, they would have been accused
of padding the budget,” O’Connor said.
Given the funding shortfall, one option would be to scrap plans
to build an interim station in Culver City, O’Connor said.
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