A Line - Arterial Rapid Bus

[HuskyGrad]

So speeding or running a red light, which are a heck of a lot riskier to society, are petty misdemeanors while fare evasion is a misdemeanor? WTH?

Fare evasion is also stealing revenue from the agency.

[mulad]

A lot of the concerns are probably outweighed by having faster boarding times, making for faster travel times. Aaron Isaacs assembled a number of articles in a Minnesota Streetcar Museum newsletter several months ago that talked about the introduction of "PAYE" -- "Pay as you enter" -- back around the 1920s (I think... I don't have it right in front of me).

Lots of complaining about how streetcars slowed down because of that. In the early days, there were two employees per car, one to operate the vehicle and another to take fares. When they switched to single-person operation, everyone needed to get on in the front (previously, people typically entered from the rear and exited in front!)

It reminds me that many European systems have had automated fareboxes placed to the rear of buses for a long time. Proof-of-payment has probably helped retain riders over the years.

[RailBaronYarr]

This is kind of an aside, but it seems like transit has had to deal with things that roads haven't for many, many years. Tolls were seen as too unsavory for roads early on, largely because 1) people don't like paying for something and gas taxes were a more hidden (if not direct) way to fund roads, and 2) toll booths meant waiting in lines to pay (and, were/are expensive to build & operate). That's a luxury that politics afforded roads but not transit, which had/has to have a complicated, costly, timely method of proving people are paying for the exact trip they're taking. As Mike notes, transit companies were doing everything they could in the 20s/30s to reduce costs. What if we had built tolled highways and implemented PoP with all-door boarding in the 30s/40s instead of (basically) the reverse?

Other examples: transit fare increases have outpaced gas tax bumps over time (though streetcar fares were the "public doesn't want a gas tax hike" of the 1910/20s), traffic violations being mostly a petty misdemeanor (including using MnPass lanes illegally - 'stealing' from MnDOT the same as stealing from MT), etc.

[Tcmetro]

Metro Transit also issued an RFP for a phone app

About damn time!

Do you have a link to that RFP? I'd like to see what they're requesting.

Just saw this message, here's the link:

http://metrocouncil.org/METC/files/d3/d ... 2a4777.pdf

[FISHMANPET]

That link's a little convulted, this should get you to the actual RFP: http://io.questcdn.com/questio/action/p ... x=0&page=0

[MSPtoMKE]

Here is the May 2015 Project Update
http://a-line.createsend1.com/t/ViewEma ... 23F30FEDED

The opening has been pushed back to sometime in 2016... So I guess having the C Line open in 2017 is still technically one line per year...

Also, construction on the 46th St. and Minnehaha platforms have begun in conjunction with the Minnehaha reconstruction project

[fehler]

Oh, that's what that is? I thought some sort of protected bikelane was going in on Minnehaha Ave, and wrapping the corner.

[twincitizen]

In addition to the above disappointment about not opening until early 2016 and ongoing station completion throughout summer 2016(TVMs, signage, etc.), there's even more bad news: https://twitter.com/OhCaliJade/status/6 ... 6144267266

I assume this bid was for only a component of the project (like station work, relocating curbs, etc.) and not the entire project being over budget. All of the work in the corridor being done by MNDOT, Ramsey, St. Paul, etc. is obviously budgeted for and already underway in some cases. Sounds like the stations cost a lot more than projected. Perhaps the already-announced delay to 2016 is actually a blessing in disguise in this case, as they have some buffer time now to ask Met Council to move some money around to fill the financing gap without incurring any further delays.

[froggie]

A follow-up tweet explains some of the reasons why the bid was so high.

[Archiapolis]

A follow-up tweet explains some of the reasons why the bid was so high.

Sorry, dumb architect here.

A story hits about this project being 45% over budget and...there are two pages of fare collection posts and scant mention of the bid.

45%...

Serious question to the transit types: Are you so inured to these budgets being blown away by the bids that you just shrug at these discrepancies? I know it isn't a direct analog (because private versus public nature of infrastructure) but if this was a building project, someone would be fired for missing a target this badly and it seems to keep happening on transit projects over and over...and over.

Do you guys care about the public perception of this phenomenon? To me, this just seems to give fodder to the anti-transit, anti-government negatives who hate everything that isn't a highway.

To the uninitiated, this seems like another embarrassment. Is a fundamental shift required in how these things are estimated? I've seen a lot of other excuses in other threads that would NEVER wash on a building project...

[EOst]

To the uninitiated, this seems like another embarrassment. Is a fundamental shift required in how these things are estimated? I've seen a lot of other excuses in other threads that would NEVER wash on a building project...

Well, as you've pointed out in other threads, building projects don't get proposed at all without analogous projects that prove viability and cost. In that respect, aren't the two kind of apples and oranges?

[mulad]

I'm not sure I've seen bids blowing away expected estimates all that often. RFPs and bids tend to go out and come back on a cycle of several months. The things that seem to really make headlines are the estimates trotted out during design and preliminary engineering, since those phases can last years/decades -- plenty of time for inflation to swing costs higher.

I was pretty surprised how long they took to ask for bids on this project, so the excuse that the contractors were already heavily booked for the season makes sense to me. (Whether that's actually true or not is another question.)

This F&C post says that this $11.49 million bid was only for part of the project, though -- it brought the total budget up to $27 million from a previous $25 million.

I'm a little curious if the "engineering estimate" for this particular bid included a contingency or not. That might explain why it didn't nudge the overall budget more significantly.

[Archiapolis]

To the uninitiated, this seems like another embarrassment. Is a fundamental shift required in how these things are estimated? I've seen a lot of other excuses in other threads that would NEVER wash on a building project...

Well, as you've pointed out in other threads, building projects don't get proposed at all without analogous projects that prove viability and cost. In that respect, aren't the two kind of apples and oranges?

...except, there are other BRT projects around aren't there? BRT isn't a "pilot project" is it? We are talking about concrete, asphalt, class 5 base, stations that presumably have somewhat known dimensions and basic understanding of construction materials, etc aren't we...

In building projects, variations from "similar projects" in the range of 5% are cause for alarm...

There are no other BRT projects to compare to?

If a proposed building project were looked at in a simple zoning code analysis/pro forma and found to be 45% over a "comparable" project, that would be the end of it. The only "loss" would be the time for a zoning code analysis and plugging in square footage numbers, etc on an existing spreadsheet. No real drawings even need to be created. Infrastructure projects don't seem to follow this path and I'm confused when it seems like it should be somewhat straightforward in quantifying yards of concrete, etc.

I guess this is what I'm asking...should "the budget" at schematic phases remain undisclosed on a public infrastructure project if they are off by these kinds of staggering percentages? I"m not a lawyer either so I'm not sure about freedom of information, etc...but, it seems like these kinds of articles give off an extremely negative perception of public transit projects.

[FISHMANPET]

There is no BRT to compare it to. We have the Red Line which barely counts as anything, and certainly the stations are totally different from what we're building here. These are the first aBRT stations we're building in our metro. I would hope that for future Arterial BRT routes we'll have a much better idea of how much these stations will cost.

And also to be clear, the high bid is specifically for the stations. It's also a pretty complex project with a lot of moving parts, as it's being tied in with all sorts of road reconstructions going on along the route.

[nate]

To be fair to MT, escalation in construction costs has been pretty intense in the last few years. That especially hurts government projects, because they're typically on a longer timeframe for a variety of reasons.

I'm also an architect, and I've got a job that's 10-12% over budget and another one that is 25% over budget right now, both private sector. One example: suspended acoustic ceilings, which I (unfortunately) design acres of, used to be installed at $2 per square foot. Today our contractors are taking bids in the $4 per square foot range. We're seeing that kind of escalation across all kinds of systems. It sucks.

[David Greene]

Also, as far as I am aware buildings don't generally cover multiple miles of land. On SWLRT, a lot of the cost inflation was due to topography and soil conditions. Getting all of that information for a 16 mile project takes a lot of field work. That's just one reason costs can change so dramatically from 1% engineering to 50%. SWLRT also experienced political delays so it gets an extra inflation hit. I would assume buildings that get delayed see a similar hit and might not pan out after the delay.

[Archiapolis]

Also, as far as I am aware buildings don't generally cover multiple miles of land. On SWLRT, a lot of the cost inflation was due to topography and soil conditions. Getting all of that information for a 16 mile project takes a lot of field work. That's just one reason costs can change so dramatically from 1% engineering to 50%. SWLRT also experienced political delays so it gets an extra inflation hit. I would assume buildings that get delayed see a similar hit and might not pan out after the delay.

I can acknowledge all of this...to a point. Topography shouldn't be a surprise, it's visible landform. When a building project is proposed, soil borings are done VERY early to determine the soil capacities, groundwater and bedrock locations. If groundwater is too high, it could cut out an entire level of underground parking (1800 W Lake ?). If bedrock is accessible it could make sense to dig a little deeper to get to it and avoid bad soils.

Like I said, I can acknowledge a major deviation between "1% and 50%" but where do these projects stand at the 25% phase (relative to 1% AND 50%)?

At the 25% phase "problem" areas should be identified and soil borings should be made at strategic locations. In my experience, to get a contractor out to do a soil boring is not expensive (relative to other things) and a soils report isn't expensive. I get that we are talking about miles of tracks but this is my point...perhaps the 1% phase needs to be revised up by a factor of 10 if we continue to be so far off.

The point that I'm trying to make is that on a building project, if the pricing at "1% design" increased 50% at the "50% design phase" people would be fired. It means that the 1% estimate was GROSSLY underestimated and there was incompetence involved. It shouldn't be a surprise that soils have organics in them or topography is difficult - the 1% estimate is the problem - it appears that they need to dramatically increase their contingencies for poor soils, engineered soils, cut/fill and the work to achieve all of the above.

[David Greene]

You certainly have a point. Another problem with SWLRT is the route wasn't finalized through Eden Prairie until very late and it just happens that that's where the majority of the problems are. The field work to identify the problems was late due to the fluctuating alignment. I'll certainly say that the alignment took too long to converge. That's politics as much as anything else. Again, building designers aren't dealing with multiple municipal tensions.

Moreover, politics again shifted the engineering focus to freight rail, parks and Kenilworth tunnels. I distinctly remember a point where staff said all engineering resources were diverted to firefighting these issues.

I don't think the borings issue is cost. It's sheer time to do all of the borings along 16 miles of track and station.

Not trying to make excuses, just explaining what happened.

[twincitizen]

http://finance-commerce.com/transit/201 ... -estimate/

Sounds like this is maybe not that big a deal, as it pushed the budget from $25MM to $27MM. The "45%" thing obviously referred to a single smaller contract and not the project as a whole. Met Council should have little problem pushing money around to make it work. This is too important a project to fall apart over a relatively minor cost increase.

[woofner]

Sorry, dumb architect here.

A story hits about this project being 45% over budget and...there are two pages of fare collection posts and scant mention of the bid.

45%...

Serious question to the transit types: Are you so inured to these budgets being blown away by the bids that you just shrug at these discrepancies?

No, in fact transit advocates have been having a fruitful conversation about transit infrastructure and operations costs for a long time. Alon Levy has probably the best-organized exploration of infrastructure costs on his blog:

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpres ... ion-costs/

I think probably Captain Transit and Market Urbanism blogs have the best conversations about cost drivers of operations costs, but I don't have specific links for you. Also I think some of the California HSR guys have some good stuff about costs, maybe mulad can help my faulty memory with the specific links. I do remember the Systemic Failure blog, which every once in a while has good cost overrun stuff (the author was particularly cheesed about a BART extension to the Oakland airport). A lot of this conversation happens in a disorganized fashion on twitter though.