After a dozen years of study and tens of millions of dollars worth of design work, experts are pretty sure the proposed busway from Hartford’s Union Station to downtown New Britain is going to cost about $573 million.
At the beginning, officials guessed it might cost just $80 million, a figure they tossed around as recently as 2001, but as they began working on the details, the cost rose steadily to today’s figure.
How much the final tab may be is, of course, uncertain. It depends on a number of variables, from the inflation rate to the bids that contractors actually submit when the state seeks companies to do the work.
At least Connecticut taxpayers can take comfort that the federal government is picking up at least 80 percent of the tab.
Even so, Michael Sanders, the transit administrator for the state Department of Transportation, said state officials are concerned about the escalating cost.
But, he said, by the time the engineers tallied the cost of relocating rails, rebuilding bridges, putting in an overpass and more, the construction tab reached $272 million. And that’s only a fraction of the overall expense.
It may turn out to cost more than expected or it could turn out to be cheaper, though government projects tend to wind up more costly than anticipated rather than less.
Click here to see a graph of how the projected busway costs have soared since 2001.
Read Wednesday's Press for much more.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
9 comments:
That is just the START of cost to the taxpayers.
Who is calculating the ancillary costs: stations, station maintenance, equipment replacement etc?
Lets get all the costs up front!
Like many other of the mis-guided wastes of tax-payer money (like a K-8 school on the Plymouth town line) this plan ranks very high.
One must assume that the Republican Mayor of New Britski, the Dumb-o-crat Legislative delegation from the same decaying city is on board with this asinine plan.
We should then expect that Republican State Rep. Bill Hamzy would join forces with Dumb-o-crat Senator Tommie Two-Tone, Reprentatives Wright (usually wrong), and Nicastro to admantly and vigorously oppose this in an aggresive and bi-partisan fashion.
But I won't hold my breath...
And Bristol gets left out of the plans again!
And the rail cost wil increase as times goes on too!
Please hold your breath for about 10 minutes . We won't miss your know it all whining. :)
Hamzy the nose knows he he he Oh I forgot it was a elephant trunk. But I gotta say he's not a ex teacher like you.
Positively wrong know it all useless nobody who wishes he was but can't be .
Ahh the useless bloggers finally have something to do.
Hey Mr perfect when are you going to spell adamanntly ? Awww a goof?
I thought positively right was always right? LMAOROTF
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