New Cap Metro station is two years behind schedule.... (Center: 2015, pros and cons)

[Roadking2003]

....and will be almost double the original budget.

This is another reason we vote down rail projects. The last one was proposed at $1.3 billion and we all know it would end up double that amount.

Capital Metro: Costs rising for new downtown MetroRail station

[10scoachrick]

They're just following the MoPac plan

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Roadking2003

....and will be almost double the original budget.

Nope, not in the slightest.

Ben Wear is an idiot who never knows what he's talking about.

The estimated original cost, in 2014:

https://www.capmetro.org/About-Capit...es/4294968766/


"The new station configuration is estimated to cost between $30 million and $35 million"


The estimated cost now $39M, including $3 added for the water pipe (paid for by the city).

[Trainwreck20]

Curious about the disconnect, I looked into it a bit (mind you, just briefly)...

It appears that TxDOT approved a $22 million grant for the station that was proposed to cost $30-$35 million. The difference was to come from 'local partners', although it doesn't say who that is...CapMetro, I guess?

Anyway, it appears to be completely untrue that the cost was ever proposed to be $22 million - that was just he amount of 'free' money allocated to the project.

Which, btw, is a huge misrepresentation by the author.

http://buildingatx.com/2015/02/the-m...orail-station/

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Curious about the disconnect, I looked into it a bit (mind you, just briefly)...

It appears that TxDOT approved a $22 million grant for the station, that was proposed to cost $30-$35 million. The difference was to come from 'local partners', although it doesn't say who that is...CapMetro, I guess?

Anyway, it appears to be completely untrue that the cost was every proposed to be $22 million - that was just he amount of 'free' money allocated to the project.

Which, btw, is a huge misrepresentation by the author.

Building ATX » The Making of A New Downtown MetroRail Station

To give Wear a (small) benefit of the doubt, no doubt it was in Capmetro's best interest to emphasize the grant number (look at this great thing we did, we got transit money out of historically anti-transit TxDot). But they weren't completely silent on the larger number.


And potentially they explored some interim ideas of scaling down the proposal to something closer to "free" (perhaps once it looked like no local partners would come on board, I'm guessing they had hopes of CoA to pitch in some).

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by Novacek

To give Wear a (small) benefit of the doubt, no doubt it was in Capmetro's best interest to emphasize the grant number (look at this great thing we did, we got transit money out of historically anti-transit TxDot). But they weren't completely silent on the larger number.


And potentially they explored some interim ideas of scaling down the proposal to something closer to "free" (perhaps once it looked like no local partners would come on board, I'm guessing they had hopes of CoA to pitch in some).

All quite possibly true, but won't that make for interesting content in the article? Was this ever 'advertised' as 'free' by CapMetro? I would be curious to know. The relatively modest differential (<10 million) between proposal and reality (even with some expansion of scope) was never really up for a vote or anything, was it? I don't recall, maybe it was. And despite the rather sensational headline, there is some relatively good information about the changes in scope since inception.

And in the larger picture, new sources (at least at the article level) almost always seem to pick a side and only support arguments for/against something. There is almost never a 'balanced' article that lays out the pros and cons. If the reporter at least did that, I would not feel so insulted if they then 'took a side' at the end of the article, rather than the beginning (i.e. the headline, even).