Opinion
From the Crow's Nest: Is Connecticut being railroaded?
Apr 24, 2008

Every time the outlook begins to get a little sunnier, something casts a dark shadow on operations of Connecticut’s Department of Transportation.

The latest cloud was a surprise request for an additional $300 million by June 7 to keep construction of the badly needed and greatly anticipated new railroad car maintenance facility on track.

Surprise? Fiasco might be a better word for it. It appears to have been a colossal collapse in communications. Robert Genuario, Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget director, now says he knew about escalating costs a couple of years ago, but didn’t tell her or legislative leaders. Or is he just taking the fall for a general all-around snafu? Gov. Rell now concedes she may have heard the numbers a while back, but she says they were “ineffectively communicated.”

Anyway, the whole mess puts a damper on promises that things would get better when train capacity is expanded and the DOT is redirected to pay attention to mass transit as well as to highway construction.

Initially estimated at about $350 million in a bill approved in 2005, the project later ballooned to $628 million and, as recently as January, was budgeted at $732 million by the State Legislature’s Transportation Committee. Now DOT says it will need $300 million more if the rail yard is to be completed on schedule.

That brings the total to about $1.1 billion and so far nobody has been able to explain precisely why costs escalated so stratospherically and rapidly or exactly what the State can do about it now.

With the legislature due to end its session on May 7, and financial matters pretty well wrapped up, coming up with another $300 million on such short notice won’t be easy, especially when the request for it comes from an agency that already has demonstrated ineptitude in estimating costs accurately.

Gov. Rell has termed the cost escalations “unacceptable,” even allowing for inflation since the initial approval of the project, and has ordered re-examination of the entire project. Finding enough “trim room” to bring the costs down to more realistic levels appears unlikely, however, according to all reports.

There is, for example, the possibility of eliminating or at least delaying a warehouse, a pedestrian walkway and an employees’ parking garage, but the DOT says those amenities and others such as more office space are scheduled for the final phase of the project about 11 years from now. Moreover, dropping them from the plan would save only about $70 million.

It’s an old political ploy. Cost estimates are drawn on the basis of preliminary plans and a project looks not only highly desirable but perfectly doable. So, enthusiastic supporters give it the green light and that’s a signal for cost estimates to rise.

Redesign of the project appears unlikely as a deadline nears. The project has to go out for bids later this year if construction, to be undertaken in three phases ending in 2019, is to begin next spring and the facility is to be ready for the influx of the first new train cars.

The year 2019? Eleven years from now? Even New Canaan’s Lakeview Avenue bridge is moving along faster than that.

Therein lies the real rub. The State is under the gun. Getting the news at this late date has the legislature scrambling for more money and most likely will have to borrow it. Failure to come up with the funds in a timely manner can blow a hole in what looks like a promise of improved public transportation capabilities.

The maintenance shop is regarded not only as indispensable to better train service, but as a boost to the economy for all the new jobs it will generate.

To house and maintain the new M8 train cars that will greatly expand and improve Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven Line, the State has ordered 300 of those cars and has an option to buy an additional 80, according to Judd Everhart of the DOT. The first of the new cars will begin arriving early next year and will be put into service immediately, the DOT indicated. In addition, the DOT plans to begin overhauling 54 cars that have been riding the rails for about 25 years.

Obviously, then, a new up-to-date high-tech maintenance facility is key to the whole transportation improvement picture. There’s no escaping that. The State has to head for the rail yard’s roundhouse (it can’t be cornered there) and emulate the little engine that could. In the final analysis, the whole mess again underlines the need to re-examine and reconnect the DOT’s operations with ways to end the proclivity for bungling.

© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers