MTA Purple Line Bethesda - New Carrollton Light Rail

[farecard]

I was on Kenilworth Ave a few weeks ago and they were demolishing the ?Korean? building at River Rd, the Wendy's was closed, & the Shell at E/W Highway was replaced with a H-pylon.

[drwho9437]

PLTC have decided to quit the project:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... ces-Intent

PLTC is the construction contract under PLTP
http://www.purplelinetransitpartners.com/about/team/

I don't understand how this works exactly. Does it mean Fluor continues on but the other two wanted out?
Does it mean the entire P3 has to be litigated or redone?
Does it mean that PLTP has to find a sub for the original PLTC?

Can anyone who knows more about construction contracts explain what happens now, it seems like they are probably 50% done the line now and much more than 50% done the complex major structures (the yard building is closed up, Bethesda shaft is pretty much at the bottom, the Tunnel in Long Branch is lined, the larger part of the bridge structure in Silver Spring is hung, the concrete under the BW parkway seems done, etc.)

I'm sure we will eventually get news from MDOT but Hogan has a lot going on right now and the state doesn't exactly have a lot of money to go forward right now.

[drwho9437]

This is probably a better source.
https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-b ... st-relief/

[Jeff Smith]

I'm sure the contract must have a default provision/penalty.

[farecard]

So much for the wonder/glory of public-private partnerships.

[Jeff Smith]

I'm sure the contract must have a default provision/penalty.

[drwho9437]

So to be clear PLTP isn't stopping only PLTC even if the letter happens as written. I still have no idea what that means really but the P3 can continue in principle with a different construction group. I know that happened at Vogel Nuclear plant with Fluor (incidentally), the scale of the money at stake is similar. I really don't understand what the MTA/PLTP will be doing.

[STrRedWolf]

I'm sure the contract must have a default provision/penalty.

Worse. The contract has an escape clause for the contractor if the delay is over one year.

The delay is reaching three years.

[dgvrengineer]

Looks like the state is doing what the NIMBYS haven't been able to do, stop construction on the Purple Line, with all the delays.

[drwho9437]

To be clear some of the delays were due to the law suits. Some are due to CSX moving goal posts. Some are due to late environmental reviews. They don't add up to 3 years of actual schedule slip because tasks don't run in series, they run in parallel unless there is a dependency of one on the other and if you read the letter it is clear that the simple addition of the times of each task delay is not the project delay but the lawyers have for some reason just added all the sub-task delays as a project delay (this is project management 101 that, this isn't the case).

Hopefully someone will actually know something about contracting and explain how this sort of issue is normally settled. There was a suggestion somewhere that PLTP might eat PLTC costs so they weren't fined. I have no idea how these contracts work on that sort of level. I wish the MTA would make a more full comment. Construction updates on the Glenridge section were posted on 5/5, it is estimated at 28% complete. I would have thought it more than that having seen the maintenance facility closed up and most of the bridges in place, but I didn't know they needed a full water main relocation, I thought there was just concern of how close it was in one spot.

[drwho9437]

There have been a few photos posted over on Reddit of Purple Line stuff:

https://imgur.com/a/9oQT6bN

https://imgur.com/a/LipPBVI

[farecard]

Purple Line project delays, cost overruns reveal long-brewing problems


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/t ... story.html


July 18, 2020 at 8:00 AM EDT

Nearly halfway through construction, Maryland’s $2 billion Purple Line project has teetered on the verge of collapse since May.

Unless an agreement on who will pay $755 million in cost overruns is reached with the state by Aug. 22, both the construction contractor and the consortium of companies managing the 16-mile light-rail project have said they will quit.

The walk-offs threatened this spring might seem sudden, but problems on Maryland’s largest transportation project have been brewing since before the contract was signed in 2016.

Maryland officials signed the 36-year partnership with the companies even as an environmental lawsuit filed by opponents loomed. A judge’s ruling in the case ended up pushing back construction by almost a year, putting it behind schedule before the first bulldozers revved up.

The Purple Line was initially scheduled to begin carrying passengers in March 2022. However, the contractor has said that, because of the lawsuit and other delays, that won’t happen until late 2024, unless work is accelerated.

Moreover, project watchers say, a remarkably low-bid construction contract chosen amid state cost pressures might have left the Purple Line more vulnerable to escalating prices.
...

[daybeers]

This is a mess. Anyone know if there's any update?

[drwho9437]

There has been no news for the last month. Just a lot of opinion hit pieces by NIMBYs saying I told you so after they caused most of the delays with lawsuits. They have just over 2 weeks before they could stop.

I honestly don't expect an 11th hour deal. I expect lawsuits now. I hope they do work a solution but I don't see why it would suddenly materialize 2 weeks before the deadline. I don't think it is a bluff by the contractors, they just underbid it and found they wouldn't make any money on it and then there were increased costs. The increase of this dispute is I think 750 million which is only 250 million over the next lowest bid.

Personally if I were the state I would offer two kinds of concessions: time and length of the P3. They could take some service year(s) off the contract to pay for it. They also could elect to let me take longer. Finally they could tell them to not build out maybe some station immediately or other feature. A lot of the cost figure is due to "acceleration" claims. So if the state will just give them 1 year more that might bring the cost down to a few hundred million they might be able to restructure the contract to pay that out later somehow.

I read the P3's claims, tons of them are a non-sense. They calculate the total schedule slip as additive, but not ever task is in the critical path of a project like this, so they are being too aggressive. I doubt a good judge who understood project management cases would buy it. One way or another in principle we should know in just a few weeks.

They have completed a lot of the biggest structures for this project. I don't know the status of the Bethesda shaft right now but the tunnel in Long Branch is pretty done (they do need to construct one more box out to the road and remove a surface lot to do it but this is a tiny fraction of the work of building that tunnel. The bridges for the BW parkway are pretty finished, the service yard building is pretty much finished, the bridge over rock creek is there, Silver Springs structures are all there for the downtown station, they finished a bunch of other bridges also. Its mostly deck, stations, utilities and laying track at this point. (And the CSX crash wall and a few more bridges).

[dcmike]

Maryland will manage Purple Line construction if partnership falls through, state officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... story.html