Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher has picked up on concerns that Bechtel Corporation, the lead contractor in Boston’s Big Dig fiasco, is the company in charge of extending Metro rail to Tysons Corner and beyond. He adds a few tidbits to the general knowledge base, quoting Sam Carnaggio, the state’s project director for the Metro extension.
Cargaggio understands the widespread concern about Bechtel but defends the company, contending that the state of Massachusetts was mainly to blame for most of the cost overruns. The project, originally slated to cost $4 billion, wound up costing $14 billion. Carnaggio is undoubtedly correct: Governments are tempted to meddle in projects of Big Dig magnitude — and that’s exactly what worries me. What reason do we have to think that Virginia’s politicians will be any different?
Writes Fisher:
The real test, Smyth says, is how closely the government will supervise Bechtel’s work. Carnaggio agrees and says Virginia will examine every invoice Bechtel submits and conduct inspections to make sure the reported work is really done. …
Carnaggio concedes that the price of rail to Dulles, now estimated at $5.1 billon, has jumped several times and could go higher. “The price is as fixed as any construction project can be,” he says. “Some choices won’t be made until 2010; for example, we don’t want to fix prices for the stations before then because costs for materials could change, up or down.”
Cost estimates for the Rail to Dulles project have ballooned, even though the state has removed key elements such as stairs and pedestrian bridges to keep the price tag within limits that the federal government will help fund. Do you feel reassured? I don’t. Either (a) someone will decide to add those elements back in, inflating the cost later, or (b) the lack of improvements will deter ridership, aggravating operating deficits and undermining the logic for building the heavy rail extension in the first place. Take your pick.
