by James A. Bacon
A citizens group opposed to the proposed Charlottesville Bypass has unearthed documents showing that official Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) estimates of the project’s cost may be gravely understated. Just weeks before the Commonwealth Transportation Board voted to allocate $197 million to the project (to supplement the sum already spent on design and right-of-way acquisition), VDOT engineers calculated a total project cost as high as $436 million.
The Charlottesville Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO) obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request. “It is obvious that this project will cost substantially more than has been presented and approved,” said a CATCO press release. Albemarle County, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization and the CTB all should reconsider their approval of the project in light of the new information, the organization said.
Some of the higher costs may be more apparent than real. In an interview with Sean Tubbs, a reporter with Charlottesville Tomorrow, VDOT commissioner Gregory A. Whirley said that the $436 million estimate assumed the “ultimate design.” By stripping out the over engineering, the project can be simplified and costs reduced before the project is put out for bids. The high number also includes a 10% contingency figure of $26 million.
However, the CATCO documents brought to light significant engineering issues associated with the 6-mile project, which would circumvent a congested strip of U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville. As Tubbs sums up the problem, “This estimate factored in the cost of at least $46 million to excavate 3 million cubic meters of land, as well as $76 million to extract 340 cubic meters of rock. This third estimate also added $26 million for more accurate bridge costs. None of this information was made available to members of the CTB.”
Important questions arise from this new information. Did VDOT officials knowingly understate the real cost of the Bypass to the CTB and local authorities? If so, why would they understate costs, knowing that construction bids on the project could come in embarrassingly high only a half year later? Were the cost issues suppressed for political reasons and, if so, by whom?
The issue could evaporate if construction bids for the project meet VDOT’s cost estimates. But if overruns run into the tens of millions of dollars, as the documents suggest they could, someone’s going to have a whole lot of ‘splaining to do.
Update: Responding specifically to the Charlottesville Tomorrow article, Whirley briefed the CTB at the close of today’s meeting about the cost estimates for the Charlottesville Bypass and how they were derived. See the next post for details.
This article was written thanks to a sponsorship of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
