Pile-Up at Cost Overrun Junction

It would have been naive, to say the least, to expect a public works project as big as Los Angeles’ new Red Line subway to be built without cost overruns and other problems. That said, disclosure of the added costs is truly mind-boggling and extremely troubling especially in that the Red Line was--at the original estimate of $1.45 billion--already the most expensive U.S. subway project ever.

A Times investigation of the subway construction project recently found that cost overruns on just the first leg, 4.4 miles of underground track from Union Station to MacArthur Park, increased the price tag at least $200 million.

Most of the added costs resulted from the 12 major contracts awarded to private companies to design and build the five Red Line stations and to excavate the tunnels between them. The Times found that only one of those contracts, for the Red Line maintenance yard adjacent to Union Station, came in below original estimates. The rest required from 15% to 79% in additional money. Pardon a bad joke, but that surely is no way to run--or build--a railroad.

And that’s not all the bad news. Although the federal government is bearing 48% of the subway’s cost, federal funds can’t be used for cost overruns. So the money will have to be made up by local taxpayers, out of sales tax funds earmarked to build or upgrade other key segments of the modern mass transit system that this region so badly needs--such as the Blue Line Trolley and improved bus service.

Clearly the Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials now overseeing construction of the Red Line’s second leg, into Hollywood, have their work cut out for them. Perhaps the fact that the MTA is still new to the scene, born of a shotgun marriage of the two agencies that began the subway project almost a decade ago, explains some of the mess. Still, while the MTA must proceed apace with construction, it must do so with more caution--fully aware that everyone is now watching to make sure the hard lessons learned on the first segment of the subway will help make the second less costly.

“Shame on us, if we don’t get smarter,” says the head of the MTA subsidiary overseeing Red Line construction. If cost overruns continue, shame may be the least of the problems he and other MTA officials have to worry about.